- Fear of failure
- Powerful emotion
- Stops us from even trying
- Keeps us on the small potatoes
- Ignore the big problems, the hard challenges
- Many of us were "bright kids", and we're not used to failing or tying hard
- We leave school and enter the real world. Things aren't so easy.
- We fail a lot at first, we didn't develop the tools needed to recover from that
- So we wall up, we freeze
- Embrace your fear
- Push yourself
- Believe in yourself
- You will often fail
- But you will often succeed
- Embrace failure
- It's going to happen whether you like it or not
- Failure isn't the goal, but it is valuable to learn from
- So maybe it easier on yourself.
- Try a small thing to fail with
- If you succeed, hooray! Build on that thing or try something a little bigger
- If you fail, hooray! You failed at something small, so who gives a shit? Try a new thing!
-
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work. — Gustave Flaubert
- Give yourselve plenty of space to succeed where you know you can.
- Which gives you the confidence to try bigger things and possibly fail spectacularly, at which point it's not so bad.
- "When will everyone realize that I'm not as smart as I've led on?"
- It's often difficult for us to recognize our own accomplishments.
- If it came easy, then you might tell yourself that it's not hard or that it's not important.
- "Anybody could have done such and such."
- Make note of your accomplishments, even if only for yourself.
- I keep a weekly brag list where I jot down something interesting I did that week.
- It's super fucking hard to actually come up with stuff
- Dunning-Kruger effect
- Those without skill or talent tend to overestimate their skills and talents; the more-skilled underestimate theirs.
- The best way to combat this is to simply understand that it exists, and that you might be smarter or better than you give yourself credit for.
- It's something that I struggle with, even today, a decade into a successful career.
- I still have the fear. Especially now, talking in front of all of you.
- What's differen?
- I don't listen as much to that little voice that tells me that I will fail, that I'm not as good as I need to be.
Disperse these throughout the presentation, where appropriate, to emphasize a point.
- Elizabeth
- Journalism background
- Recently switched to development, is very beginner
- Older, has a husband and kids
- Intimidated by younger people with more free time to learn and experiment and stay on top of current trends
- Wondered when that anxiety goes away
- My bosses and I told her: "It never does." You just learn to live with it.
- "What Stuttering Taught Me About Marketing"
- themes: fear, courage, empowerment, accomplshment
- Sharon Steed
- Talk at Madison+ Ruby 2014
- A woman with a significant stutter, speaking in front of hundreds of paying attendees about what affect it had on her ambition and career
- Simply attending the talk made me so ashamed of the little fears I've allowed to stop me from doing something
- Let alone the content of the talk:
- Embrace your fears, your limitations, to help make you unique from the others who have similar skills as you
- Your shortcomings humanize you
- Don't listen to the fear that tells you that you're not good enough
- Remember to go back through my notes from the conference for more than these recollections
Disperse these throughout the presentation, where appropriate, to emphasize a point.
Above all else, realize that the people that you revere are are just people. "I could never be as smart as Such And Such". Bullshit.
Reminder! Your idols poop daily, sometimes with urgency! DISCARD YOUR IDOLS.
If you think to yourself that you'll apply for that job when you're ready, or you'll start that project when you've learned that one more skill, or you'll pitch your boss on an idea once you've practiced a bit more, or you'll talk to that cute person in the coffee shop next time when you feel more confident: stop letting the doubt win. The doubt will never go away.
People that don’t constantly ask themselves, “Am I doing it wrong?”… I envy you.
You can almost certainly do the thing you want to do. But if you try and fail, what's so bad about that, anyway? We let the fear of failure paralyze us into doing nothing.
Great people do things before they're ready. They do things before they know they can do it. And by doing it, they're proven right. Because, I think there's something inside of you—and inside of all of us—when we see something and we think, "I think I can do it, I think I can do it. But I'm afraid to." Bridging that gap, doing what you're afraid of, getting ouf of your comfort zone, taking risks like that—THAT is what life is. And I think you might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that's special. And if you're not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself. Now you know. A mystery is solved. So, I think you should just give it a try. Just inch yourself out of that back line. Step into life. Courage. Risks. Yes. Go. Now.
In recounting a school-age story about a time he was vulnerable to a girl he liked, and she told her friends who mocked him. He realized that he could remove the shame's power by being vulnerable all the time, to everyone, on his own terms.
I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them.
It's almost a cliche at this point, but still a powerful sentiment. One of the core components if Vipassana medetation is the dispassionate observation of your emotions, of your reactions, of your thoughts. Recognize that they exist, that they have causes, and let them wash away. That they do not control you unless you cede that control to them.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune