One of the biggest things I hear that constraints talented individuals is the “fear of failure”

But what it is it truly? A thread.

I was talking to my very talented friend who is applying for business schools in the US.

She said “what if I don’t get in? What if the effort is not worth it?”

“Will I have wasted so many months? What will I have to show for it”
I have heard this so many times, including in my own head.

The fear of failure grips a lot of us, from doing things that we think we should do, to questioning the effort we have put in something.

We ask - is it worth it?
What we are subconsciously doing is that we are tying all our efforts, over days, months, even years, to one single outcome.

That one outcome is usually one socially accepted metric.

It could be money, a promotion, getting into a college, getting an award.
This psychological sleight of hand probably is an evolutionary outcome of optimizing effort to outcome.

It also is an oversimplification that makes it easy for us to “process”

If the hunting process fails, curse yourself to course correct so that you do it right later
But what we forget when we undergo this is that we are not the same person anymore.

We have grown, become wiser, become stronger. We are now at a higher platform than we were before.

We can leap even further now.
It took me years to let go of my hunting instincts.

People call it “love the process”, “go with the flow”, “find you Ikigai”

For me, the simple question you have to answer is “am I better than yesterday”

If the answer is yes, the outcome doesn’t matter.
Life is non-linear, but we love straight paths

Years of effort may suddenly breakthrough one day. If you grow, and are true to yourself, there is nothing better than that

Trying to over-engineer your life, tied to outcomes, can leave you unhappy

Instead, work go with the flow

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
Still wondering about this 🤔


save as q