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0:02
Welcome to today's episodes. And
0:04
we are going to dive into
0:07
the fear of failure and the fear
0:09
of embracing mistakes.
0:11
Now let's start by saying
0:14
that the fear of failing,
0:17
the fear of making mistakes, their learned
0:19
behaviors. As humans,
0:22
we are only born with the fear
0:24
of falling down and the fear of
0:27
loud noises. Every other
0:29
fear that we've experienced come from something
0:31
that you have learned typically
0:33
in your childhood and this will define
0:36
what you believe today and it will
0:38
impact how you feel
0:40
today. Now, when you look at
0:42
society. There are consequences
0:44
to making mistakes, especially at work,
0:47
right? So consequences in terms of your work,
0:49
in terms of your reputation,, so
0:52
we're not going to pretend like
0:54
society doesn't judge and punish.
0:57
Making mistakes does bear
0:59
consequences, right? But.
1:03
I've worked with thousands of leaders
1:05
and the fear of failure can really
1:07
paralyze even the most ambitious people.
1:10
It's a common misconception
1:13
that mistakes are setbacks rather
1:15
than an opportunity for growth. And I, and you
1:18
know, I find that people find that difficult
1:20
to believe because they don't know how
1:22
to transform a mistake into an opportunity.
1:25
But When you are
1:27
scared of making decisions, when you're scared
1:29
of being creative, when you're scared of taking risks,
1:33
I mean, these are essential components
1:35
for thriving personal life, for
1:37
thriving career, and
1:39
for thriving business, right? I remember
1:41
this very, very, very, very distinctly.
1:44
I used to have a physical reaction, when
1:47
I realized that I made a mistake. And
1:49
You may have learned from childhood that
1:51
making a mistake is bad. I
1:53
certainly did. when we made
1:56
mistakes in my house, as a
1:58
kid, we, we had consequences
2:00
and very often it involved
2:02
a belt So of course you
2:04
will be scared to make
2:06
mistakes when you're an adult. All this to say
2:09
that I do understand that it
2:11
is, something that is ingrained
2:14
in your mindset and in your beliefs.
2:16
but I'm here to tell you
2:18
that embracing
2:20
mistakes can radically change
2:22
not only your personal growth in your personal
2:25
life. but it also,
2:28
will, affect your capacity to
2:30
innovate and your capacity to grow inside
2:32
of your organization. the truth
2:34
is that when you work in a culture
2:37
where people are afraid, they're afraid of
2:39
sharing their opinion. They're afraid of speaking
2:42
up,, they're, that really creates,
2:45
a culture of stagnation.
2:47
People miss out on opportunities
2:50
and potentially on providing
2:52
groundbreaking ideas that will make a difference
2:54
inside the organization. And this is
2:56
proven, right? Big organizations like
2:59
McKinsey and Gallup, they've all done
3:01
research around this topic. And
3:03
they do say companies
3:05
where people are afraid, they
3:07
don't foster innovation. They
3:10
don't grow. they, their profits
3:12
are capped, right? So you
3:15
can't necessarily change the culture
3:17
of your organization yet, but
3:19
you can change how you feel about
3:22
making mistakes and how you
3:24
treat your team when they make a
3:26
mistake. So here are some things that
3:28
I'm going to talk to you about that will help
3:30
you identify. How
3:33
you behave when a mistake happens
3:35
and will potentially help you shift your mindset
3:37
about failure. When you make
3:39
a mistake, it will trigger
3:42
a stress response in you and
3:44
this will make you feel unsafe.
3:47
Unless you have done some intentional
3:49
work on your mind, if
3:52
you've done mindset work, you're
3:54
likely to go into one
3:57
or more of these four
3:59
typical stress responses.
4:02
So your job here is to identify,
4:04
and I'm going to share them with you in a minute, I
4:07
want you to identify which one
4:09
of these you go into, because
4:11
the minute you identify what's going
4:14
on, you have the power to change
4:16
it. And the issue
4:19
here is that when you're, when
4:21
you don't identify them, what happens
4:23
is that the emotion runs you instead
4:25
of you running the emotion,
4:28
instead of you, you,
4:30
proactively leading,
4:32
you're reacting to your emotion.
4:35
Alright, so here are the four types
4:38
of responses. they
4:40
are fight, flight, freeze,
4:43
and fawn. And I'm gonna give you examples
4:45
for each of them. Again,
4:47
what I want you to do is to listen and to
4:49
see how do you behave? How do
4:51
you react? Now, One other thing
4:53
that is really important that I me mention at
4:55
this point is that when you
4:58
have a reaction,
5:00
when you have an emotional reaction,
5:02
what will happen is at work you'll
5:04
be, you'll be fine. You, you're not gonna,
5:07
you know, be rude to the people at work. But
5:10
then what happens that you go home and
5:12
you will lash out on your spouse,
5:14
on your children, on your loved ones. Because
5:17
that's how you'll empty up the stress
5:20
response that is all over your body.
5:22
And this is what creates,
5:25
um, tension in your
5:27
personal relationships that are linked to
5:29
your responses at work. Okay?
5:32
It's not your boss's fault, if
5:34
you have something happens at
5:36
work and then you go home and you shout at your spouse
5:38
or your kids. Right. It's the way that
5:40
you're processing
5:43
the emotion of what happened at work
5:45
that is affecting the way that you're
5:47
behaving at home. Okay. Really, really
5:49
important. And again, no
5:51
shame here. It's happened to all of us. All right,
5:53
let's go to the four responses. So fight
5:56
is when you get confrontational,
5:59
you just, the three things
6:01
that are mainly confrontation, justification and
6:03
denial. So you start fighting and you may
6:06
become defensive and confrontational
6:08
and you're arguing or blaming
6:10
other people to defend your actions,
6:13
without even looking at
6:15
the situation or anything. Number two, justification
6:18
is when you become aggressive and
6:21
you're justifying the mistake and you're insisting
6:23
that your approach was the best and the most most logical
6:26
choice at the time, number three
6:28
is denial. In some cases, you might completely
6:30
outright deny that the mistake was made,
6:33
even if it's in everyone's face.
6:35
And even if it's in the face of
6:37
evidence, Okay, the second
6:40
response is flight, and flight
6:42
is characterized by avoidance, withdrawal,
6:44
or distraction. So, you may
6:46
try to avoid,, discussing the mistake
6:49
or the consequences of your
6:52
actions, possibly even
6:54
physically leaving the situation, leaving
6:56
the room, because you're like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna talk
6:58
about this, I'm not gonna discuss this, right?
7:00
you're avoiding it, right? Or you might
7:03
withdraw from conversations about
7:05
the mistake or from responsibilities
7:07
to avoid facing the issue.
7:10
Or you may engage
7:12
in,, unrelated activities
7:14
or tasks to distract yourself and
7:16
others from the fact that there was a mistake,
7:18
these are stress responses.
7:21
We behave in that way.
7:23
Automatically in most of the time we
7:25
don't realize this is what's going on, right?
7:28
Okay, number three is freeze. Freeze
7:30
is characterized
7:32
by inaction, silence or overthinking.
7:34
So you may become unable
7:37
to make a decision or
7:39
take action to correct the mistake.
7:41
You can't make a decision. You can't, Take
7:44
action. Like you just, you're stuck, right?
7:46
You're stuck. Number two is silence.
7:48
So you do, you go into silence
7:51
when the mistake is brought up and,,
7:53
you're unable to find a word or respond
7:55
to the questions about what happened. Another
7:58
thing that I've seen actually is kind of
8:00
similar is when people,,
8:02
they start ignoring others. For example, I work with
8:04
a manager once and you know, he,
8:06
he would, he would.
8:08
When people in his team made mistakes, he would
8:10
completely ignore them. Like, he
8:13
would stop, literally stop, give them
8:15
the silent treatment and it's like, what are you doing?
8:17
You can't do that, right? You need to address the
8:19
situation. But that was a stress response.
8:21
People behave in this way. It's not because
8:24
they're evil or they're horrible people.
8:26
They're stress responses, they're automatic
8:29
responses that, they're not even many
8:31
times aware of what they're doing
8:33
or the consequences of what they're doing. And sometimes
8:35
they are aware. They do it on purpose, but they
8:37
do it on purpose because it's a response.
8:40
That's how they cope with their own
8:42
emotional dysfunction. And so
8:44
again, no judgment here, but
8:47
being aware of what you're doing will get
8:49
you a step closer to being able to
8:52
deal with it in a different way. All right, overthinking,
8:54
you maybe get stuck in the loop
8:56
of overthinking the mistake
8:59
and you think about it over and over and over again
9:01
without moving towards a solution.
9:03
You have no intention of bringing, of
9:06
coming up with a solution, but you just stay in
9:08
the loop of, feeling bad about
9:10
it, thinking about it, again and again. Okay,
9:14
the next and last one is fawn.
9:16
So this one is very typical. With
9:18
women and where the three kind
9:20
of things that characterize it is pleasing,
9:22
overcompensating and seeking reassurance.
9:25
So you made a mistake and then
9:27
now, you may immediately
9:30
attempt to make amends by
9:32
excessively apologizing or trying
9:34
to please. Those
9:36
who were affected by the mistake,?
9:39
Or, or even overcompensating.
9:41
You take on additional tasks
9:43
and responsibilities beyond what is necessary
9:45
to make up for the mistake that you made.
9:48
and then seeking reassurance is all about constantly
9:51
seeking approval, constantly seeking
9:53
reassurance from others that the The mistake
9:55
is forgiven or that the mistake is
9:58
forgotten these are stress responses.
10:01
We don't do it on purpose. Nobody wants
10:03
to be insecure. Like nobody enjoys
10:05
being insecure and doing these things. The
10:08
thing for me here is that you
10:10
need to understand that these responses
10:12
they either run you or you run yourself
10:15
and that's why self leadership for me is
10:17
the most powerful tool
10:19
that a manager can have because when you identify
10:22
the things that are running you
10:25
then you can you can make a powerful
10:27
decision to take your power back
10:30
so what I'd like you to do is to
10:32
reflect and go, okay, take
10:34
a few minutes and say, okay, I
10:36
typically either I
10:38
fight or I phone,
10:41
right? I, I
10:43
either overcompensate and seek reassurance,
10:46
or I freeze
10:48
and I. I stay in silence
10:50
or I take no action I don't make any decisions
10:53
and I kind of sit there and wait, right? What
10:56
is your MO? Because again,
10:59
when you know your MO, the minute
11:01
you identify what's going on, you
11:03
have the power to change it. But the
11:05
issue is when the emotion is running you,
11:08
you're reacting and you're not leading
11:10
yourself. Cool.
11:12
I hope you find this helpful. Let
11:14
me know. and I would
11:17
so, so, so, so appreciate to hear
11:19
back and I'd like to see what, if this is resonating
11:21
with you. So lovely to have
11:23
you here again and I'll speak
11:26
to you soon. Bye for now.
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