Gridlock Triangle - Redefining Our Relationship With The Fear of Failure

Mike 

Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we procrastinate to prevent failing because we don't want to make a mistake because we want to get things right. The fear of failure is real, and it happens to a lot of us. If you want to find out more, just carry on listening. My name is Mike. 

Yuen 

And it's Yuen. 

Mike 

Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician. 

Yuen 

Today we want to introduce a concept called Gridlock Triangle where we talk about three factors that limits or stops you from progressing, perhaps personally and more so professionally. The first one is fear of failure. The second one is doubt and the third - lack of confidence. 

Mike 

And they all seem to be quite profound in how they affect us, however, they are all interlinked and it's very hard to discuss about one without the other two and this is why we want to focus on this sort of idea that can enable us to progress. To go further in whatever we have and whatever we align with our purpose. So, the 1st and the one that we want to discuss? Today would be the fear of failure and fear of failure can affect us in many different ways and to different extent because it doesn't necessarily have to be a very complex form of you know, atychiphobia that this is paralysing us that we don't do anything and that may require professional assessment and treatment, but these are the things that we can identify as leading to procrastination, for example, or to lack of the outcome of what we're planning to do. So, what is fear of failure for you? 

Yuen 

So, I'll go with what you said. It comes in varying intensity. And it can be crippling depending on not just the intensity, but also the duration of how much it's affecting me or anyone. So, for me, the fear of failure before thinking about how to address it, we need to. Where it is coming from? I find that understanding the cause of that allow me to find ways to manage those fears better. Don't get me wrong, those fears are I wouldn't want to eliminate them entirely because we are biologically wired. To have fears like this to ensure survival. 

Mike 

It's a safety mechanism. It's a safety mechanism in that respect that for me, the fear of failure is, you know, I can't fail if I don't try. OK, so you know I could do something, but then being scared of the fact that I'm going to fail means that like, if I'm not going to move along that way, if I'm not going to do it, if I can't try it, then I won't fail so standing still in that respect may seem safer. 

Yuen 

Yeah. And I want to say in reality, you are never really standing still in the progression. You're either progressing or regressing. And the fear of failure can. And come in bite size. From a personal perspective, like you said, your inability to make decisions or to try on to take on the risks, but also it can happen in the group or organisational setting if the culture or. Failure results in a blame and judgmental environment. 

Mike 

That is true. Yeah. I mean, when we're talking about the reasons for fear of failure, that can be really deeply rooted in our upbringing. Really deeply rooted in the events that happened along the way, for example being criticised or punished for making mistakes that can lead to fear of failure, also failing in the past, and that is often put together with, you know, I've failed to achieve the goal because we all make mistakes and we all have failures and that is what essentially makes us who we are as human beings because we do happen to make mistakes. When it comes to failing in the past. It doesn't necessarily mean that we are failures as people, we failed in different events, but it doesn't automatically label us that we're going to be failing in the future. Also, one of the reasons could be that you're a perfectionist, although perfectionist for me is a little bit different because perfectionist focuses on their success, on making things right and that can lead to not necessarily to failure, but not achieving the success, whereas the failure is when you focus on the opposite of the failure. 

Yuen 

And I think. We need to first of all clarify that we are not Born This Way. Because as babies, we constantly fall, get up and we keep doing that. It is part of our nature to embrace mistakes and failure and grow. So, if you feel like you are a perfectionist or you notice that you have those tendencies. 

Mike 

It's part of our nature, yeah. 

Yuen 

It's helpful to examine, like you said, when failure happened when you were younger. What was the societal expectation and what was the response that you got when you were younger? 

Mike 

And also in that context as well, whether your self-worth was strictly connected to whether you succeeded or failed, cause that's something that the accomplishments. Or lack of the accomplishments can be then very closely connected to self-worth. 

Yuen 

And so when we look at, we all feel growing up or have different opportunities or chances that this happened multiple times and they will be. Environment where it is put upon us. However, there will be situation when some people are more conscious of that and wanted the praise. When you are like you said. Would you seeing great results? So when we then one way or another starts to link your self-worth to productivity, then it makes it very, very difficult to separate you to what you produce or whether what you produce. Is good or bad? What other people around you are saying? You let it directly impact you as a person in terms of how you feel and how you see yourself. 

Mike 

And going back to being criticised or punished for mistakes in many different ways, that often is linked, and this is one of the reasons for fear of failure as well, which is a very narrow definition of failure and success. Yes. And if we set the success As for example. I don't know. If you're doing a test, you need to get 100%. That's the success. So this is a very narrow margin and that prevents you from actually achieving very positive results because your mind is fixated on getting 100% and that can even prevent you from taking that exam and learning from it as a less. Whereas if you extend this definition to for example, I don't know 80%-70% whatever just approaching the exam just to see what the result is that is extending the definition of success and that allows you to. Increase your self-worth essentially. 

Yuen 

I would challenge that a little bit though. If the goals that we set, the goals that I set used to be exactly like what you said or the goals that were set for me. However, if the goals are more effort orientated instead of result orientated, then I feel that we are shifting. Towards the effort and the hard work that is put into it because. Easily we ignore that and only focus on the outcome. It might be that the outcome is done without any hard work. Maybe the outcome is achieved in so many different ways. However, if the focus is, I want to learn X,Y and Z want to demonstrate. I don't know hard work discipline. And I want to learn in this test I want to be better at whichever one is. This feels to me more of a growth mindset instead of I want to get to 100. 

Mike 

Yeah, well, you're right there. And I think that this desire or the need to. Achieve the perfect result that can lead to all sorts of different symptoms, such as anxiety avoidance. You know, you can also feel like you're losing control as well. Feeling helpless, I guess, or powerless, you know, these are the feelings and the symptoms of it. And if that's not. Tackle that can lead to some serious consequences, including, you know, the need for medication or therapy and very often unpacking that and understanding that is first step to trying to overcome those fears. 

Yuen 

Yeah. And when we talk about failures for some people, that might mean making a mistake. And they will see as a failure. So I think there will be some parts where we learn. And this is a skill that can be learned and we can improve with practise is when you learn to see mistakes as a step closer. To where you want to. Two, it becomes a stepping stone instead of something that's stopping you from getting to where you want to get to. 

Mike 

And understanding that can start to put you in a better position and convince yourself with this positive mindset that you said that actually making mistakes. It's part of the learning part of the. This have you got any examples of fear of failure from your life? 

Yuen 

I grew up in a very productivity driven environment because it is seen as the survival of the fittest. From the point of result. So when you say the aim is a. 100 that's usually the aim that was set for me when I was in school. So when I get 98. That's two points not being good enough. When I get two hits by one of my parents using a cane. So that's that's quite normal when I was growing up. So I'm sure that was done with the purest of intention to make sure that my potential is stretched and I am not in inverted commas lazy or careless, so I grw up with that and so that might explain why I have the perfectionist tendency. So when I was looking at how to improve myself as a person, that was one of the things I'm working on. Again, a skill that can be improved because you start with the self-awareness than you are more conscious of how you speak to? Yourself when you talk about fear of mistakes and failure, I've been observing previously about. In organisations where mistakes are being frowned upon, or I should say reporting of mistakes are being frowned upon, or even any of the reports when something happened, when the safety concern leads to whistle blowing or something that causes harm to a patient. A lot of the time it comes from people don't feel safe to report their mistakes, people don't feel safe to talk about their concerns people don't feel safe to make mistakes. It doesn't have to mistakes that is life threatening. But it can be creating an environment for people to go. I've done this. No harm was done. How can we learn from as? 

Mike 

Yeah. And this is essentially how an organisation has to make a decision how they're going to. Progress when mistakes happen, OK, it's either we're going to punish, OK, we're going to find the blame. And when there is a blame, there was a person. There was somebody responsible for it, or you're going to encourage learning opportunity to grow, to allow people to be open and honest about them. Misgivings, you know, we don't come to work to do a bad job. We don't, you know, approach tests when we're kids to fail, we go in there to test our ability to complete a task, you know. 

Yuen 

I think also when a blame is a sign to a person, that's also whether consciously or unconsciously, is a getaway card to reflect on what can be improved in an organisation. So what can they improve as a system? Because it's easier to say your fault, not mine. Where as a leader it would be more beneficial for the leader to say how can we work together and what role do I play in this and how can I better support this person or maybe the next person? 

Mike 

For me, assigning the blame to a person to an individual is suggesting that the mistake that was done was deliberate, that that person did it on purpose because it doesn't take into consideration the circumstances state of mind and everything else. And that's what is the systems in the organisations that you're talking about. So they those systems. Can potentially be improved if we look closer into all the circumstances of the failure, yeah. 

Yuen 

Yeah. And I guess that's one version of it. There can be more, I don't know whether moderate is the right word for, where it where they feel it's that person's fault, but they take into account all the circumstances of that person. So not circumstance of the system and then I would say the next step would be is to look at what the system can be improved on. So I think when you talk about sometimes parallelising. Because you're not able to make a decision every time when I take on something new, I always feel there is a mixture of the possibility of achievement. And that can be quite motivating and exciting and also the anxiety of failing because you're dealing with uncertainty. You're dealing with the unknown, and so do you think is a balance between being motivated by the possibility of achievement and balancing that against the anxiety of failing? 

Mike 

So you're looking at essentially risk and benefits of the whatever you put ahead of you. One way or. 

Yuen 

Another yes, I guess what I want to explore is how much your brain is being trained to react in those situation, because if you're made the. Is used to going ohh my goodness threat. Stop what you're doing. It's going to grow because it's doing that all the time so it needs to grow. Whereas if we have personal system in place that helps you. Breathe address those fears. Then perhaps, in this situation, even with the amygdala going into overdrive, you have practise sufficiently to manage them. 

Mike 

So you think it's a function of motivation, because for me, being motivated, even highly motivated? Can still not necessarily lead to completing the task or whatever you decided to do, and it can lead to procrastinating in a way that you're just going to put it off. Put it away, try to be perfect with whatever you're planning to do and. It's a bit like there was a story that I listened to in one of the podcasts where one of the guys that runs the website where we host our podcast. He said that he met a guy on some podcasters convention somewhere in the States. And this guy was telling him: Ohh yeah, I'm about to release. I'm so excited. I'm going to prepare. I just have to do some final bits with editing and I've already recorded some episodes and I'm just about to release my podcast. OK. And then the year after. The same guy met this aspiring podcast. And he was in exactly the same position, he said. Yeah. I'm just about. I'm just want to record a few more episodes. I'm not quite ready to put it out to the world. And I'm still, you know, really excited and want to tweak everything I did make sure that everything is perfect, that everything is dialled in. And master beautifully. And that is despite high in the motivation the effect is not there. 

Yuen 

I see it as a seesaw, so if the fear is stronger then you will paralyse. If the excitement and the motivation plus the awareness and how to manage their fears is stronger than the seesaw tipped into. The other direction. So if the fear is higher because when you say yeah, you are motivated to do something, but you are procrastinating because the fear is in the driving seat. That's why procrastination happen is not that motivation's not strong enough. It's just fear is stronger. 

Mike 

Fear of putting yourself out there to do to complete the task. 

Yuen 

No Fear of making a mistake, not putting yourself out there is the fear of what if it's not good enough? What if it's wrong and just want to be a little bit better? Because when I am a little bit better, maybe the fear is not going to be as loud shouting in my ear. 

Mike 

Yeah, yeah, there is that. I've been in positions before where I had fewer failure. And I wasn't particularly scared of failing. As such I was more scared of the reaction of people around me. Like for example, let's go back to tada, my dad. 

Yuen 

But hold there. They have been situation where the fear is not driven by external. 

Mike 

Yeah. Yes, there have been. 

Yuen 

And why is that? 

Mike 

Because I think it's a question of your own standards and your own understanding of how you see yourself in the mirror essentially, or your work, you're not deliver it to the standard that you would anticipate that it might not be good enough and you're going to let yourself down, but. 

Yuen 

Is it not a different standard that you hold for yourself than to other people? 

Mike 

I think there is always a discrepancy between the standards you set for yourself and to other people. And depending on the approach, sometimes it balances. You know that you set yourself to a higher standards than others, but sometimes you set yourself to a lower standards than others and you expect more from others. 

Yuen 

In what situation? 

Mike 

What do you mean by affects? Whether it's self-driven or whether it's affected by others? 

Yuen 

So situations where if you do some. Thing or not do something then in your case your dad will come at you or respond it in a negative manner compared to situation that's not related to him at all. But there is still that fear of failure. 

Mike 

Because you know, if you are being subjected to situation where you're being criticised for how you do things or what you get or how you achieve for what you can't achieve, then it also impacts the way of how you see yourself. And how you set your own personal expectations towards yourself. This is, you know, this is conditioning. Somebody tells you all the time you're not good enough. You're not good enough, you you've failed. And sometimes I mean at at some point you got to the point that even if you do something right, there was always something to pick on. And that's probably when I. 

Yuen 

OK. Always not good enough. 

Mike 

Realise that I can't be always wrong. I can't be always bad. No, and observing it as well observe being a, you know, participating in IT conditions into something. And then those fears translate later on in the future where you come into similar position, similar situation and you stops you from getting no access on what would my dad say. OK, what would my grandma say? What would my sister say? And we all sometimes we want to look at the events through the prism of others, maybe because that's the. Only way we know. Maybe because we weren't encouraged to go for it regardless. 

Yuen 

So would that not then fall into caring about other peoples perception of you? So you are fearful of what you think they think of you? 

Mike 

Well, yes, but this ultimately whether it's you are conditioning yourself because for example of perfectionism or whether you've been conditioned by others, it could be your peers, you know, it could be amongst your friends as well supposedly. It doesn't matter what led you to the situation, you are now. The result is that when there is a challenge, when there is a decision to make, you either. Put it off. Because you are afraid to fail, you're afraid to let yourself down, and those that might be ingrained in your brain. 

Yuen 

So now that you have the awareness. What has helped you deal with it? 

Mike 

I haven't had any therapy or any formal treatment as such, OK, for, in general for my mental health or my, you know, psychological state. I think that for me it was being exposed to making those mistakes bit by bit and realising. That I can't be always in the wrong and. I still sometimes, you know, look at things that are now I never gonna get there, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I don't know whether there is a way of getting completely out of sight from your failure because your failure is also defence mechanism for us, you know. If you are standing in front of a skateboard that you've never been on, and then all of a sudden you go and say, OK, let's have a bash, OK, let's go and see what happens. And you're trying to do a simple trick. You can kill yourself. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit probably, but you can hurt yourself. Seriously. Yeah. So you say? Well, actually, I'm scared of doing it because my brain told me that it's not going to be safe for me. But when you're making a decision, for example, about changing jobs or stepping up you may you look at things as ohh am I good enough and I'm going to tell you what I was thinking when I was much, much younger. Still with my dad, my dad being in business and everything else. It's a great disappointment for him that I haven't followed. He stepped into the proper business, OK. And it's not my instinct. But then when I was younger, I was comparing myself to people who were successful in the business that were my dad's friends and my dad's partners, and I was looking and I said they don't seem particularly that smart. They don't think particularly that. Well, I don't know. Educated well accustomed to. I don't know. Talking to people in a nice way or being too nice or not nice enough, and they were quite successful. So I thought that ohh one day I will just be like that. Then I'm going to step into this business and I'm going to do whatever needs to be done to become such. Useful, but then I realised that successful can mean many different things and for me it's not. Particularly, you know, finding myself in business and you can be happy and you can be fulfilled doing all sorts of other things even though you were conditioned to become that. And I know that for me. Stopping any business venture, for example. Would be still would have still the stigma of the fear of failure. 

Yuen 

So going back to what you said earlier on, because I'm sure some of our listeners would have experienced the same as what you've mentioned about the procrastination or putting things off or don't want to start, what have you found helpful in managing those in smaller? Process or what have you done? 

Mike 

For me, the thing that helped with the fear of failure as such, I think it was trying to rationalise. The risk and benefit, so you realise that, for example, well actually if I go for it, if I fail, that's not going to be the end of the world. OK. So you extend or expand the definition of the failure. And I think this is a big thing. Also, reading up about other Peoples's lives and the way they've been going through their own experiences. Using the failures as such to learn, I have also been, you know, quite close with my dad observing him and he failed as well. He wasn't the best person at accepting those failures, but he was much more critical at accepting failures of others. Then he was of his own. He wasn't particularly comfortable talking about it, but he always was quite strong in terms of bouncing back. So that was also the lesson for me to say, well, actually, you can always get up. Recalibrate. Redefine what you want to go for and try. Just try. So now I think that through being a combination of other people experiences and also through exposing yourself to a smaller things that might you know. That you might fail in it just gets you used to the fact that it is OK to. It is OK to fail. And it is OK to learn from it. It's not the end of the world, because our nature as human is to carry on. You know, we work, you fall, you get up and get on. If you break something, you get better a bit longer, but you want to survive and get.  

Ohh so I think this is the first pillar of our gridlock triangle where if your failure is a very important part of realising what can stop us and what can allow us to progress and if you failed, if you have any ideas on how to overcome the procrastination, the fear of failure, or in general moving forward to learn from your mistakes, please, please let us know. We're always curious to find out. Of course, those people who feel that this is a paralysing problem, there are therapies there, CBT, their cognitive behavioural therapy, is very often successful way if it's led by a, you know, clever psychotherapist and often. Medications might be helpful as well the SSRI, so you know some antidepressant medication can help with managing feeling of anxiety or depression that is linked to fear. So always seek advice, try to focus on the things that you can control. Plan ahead and redefine failure. I think trying to expand the definition of success allows you to put the failure into the back seat and not the driving seat. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and next week we're going to expand more on our gridlock triangle theory. OK. Thank you very much. And until next time. 

Mike 

It’s about time... for Yuen Reads. 

Yuen 

The book is by Rennie Eddo-Lodge ‘Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race’, we are all one way or another, blinkered to the truth. Sometimes it is due to individual ignorance or awareness. Sometimes it is privilege. A lot of the times it is structural inequalities where it seeps into all parts of our life, whether it is education, politics. Or employment. Complacency is the norm, and many expertly carved the history. And links it to the now by bringing me into every part of the story, I felt that a different version of history has been opened up to me. I realise I need to do more. I need to make a difference and actually step up and take responsibility. 

Mike 

Thank you for listening to the Imperfect Clinician podcast. 

Yuen 

Grow and learn with us using our experience and flaws, just like we'd learn every day about ourselves, the best way to support us is to hit that follow or subscribe button. Thanks for your participation in our socials. We take to heart the ratings, reviews and comments. 

Mike 

The best way we can repay you is by making this podcast better and by reaching and inspiring more people like you, like us... Until next time.