Tamara puts a bean stew into the oven on Friday. Then before the sun goes down, she turns off the oven. But she doesn’t remove the stew. And hundreds of other women in her village in Lithuania do the same. And like them, Tamara leaves the stew in the oven until later on Saturday when she removes it and serves it to the family.
Why did she do this?
Tamara and the other women were Jews living in Lithuania in the 1900s and so did not work on the Sabbath which begins sundown on Friday. To serve hot food would require cooking and since cooking is work, it isn’t allowed on the Sabbath. So these women came up with an ingenious solution. Let the oven continue to cook the food and keep it warm until it’s ready to be served after Saturday services.
Whenever we see a pattern of behavior, there is always something driving it
The desire to serve a hot meal on the Sabbath drove these women to come up with a way to have hot food prepared without having to cook food on the Sabbath.
This is similar to what happens with fear of failure. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s driven by something.
What causes fear of failure?
Meanings created by the mind.
For example, my student Jessica was putting off posting to a forum to request people to interview. This is something she needed to do to market her business.
When she posted her assignment she listed the following feelings:
Scared, disappointed and powerless
And she listed the following meanings:
I will not be successful in conducting interviews.
It was wrong of me not to have posted my callout for interviews by now.
I will be unsuccessful in creating an infoproduct business.
These meanings caused her to be afraid of conducting the interviews.
She used the Lefkoe Freedom Process to dissolve these meanings. After that, she was able to make the post and conduct the interview.
How do you find the meanings that cause fear of failure?
To find the meanings that cause fear of failure follow these steps.
- Imagine you take action and fail.
- Notice the feelings and thoughts that arise.
- Ask “What does this mean about me?” and “How might others see me?”
You will have some meanings in the form of negative judgments about yourself.
These are the meanings that are holding you back
For example, Phil had been invited to put on a webinar for his mentor’s email list. Six months later he still had not done that.
Here’s how he did the steps.
- I imagine that I do the webinar and everyone is bored by it.
- They’ll think my ideas were stupid and boring.
- They’ll think I’m stupid.
He was able to dissolve these meanings and then he immediately scheduled the webinar before he had even decided on the topic. He wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
Once the meaning was dissolved there was nothing keeping him from taking action
Keep in mind behavior always has a driver, like Tamara turning off the oven and leaving the food inside until the next day.
If you run from failure like Phil or Jessica had been doing, then something drives your behavior too. And it’s likely meanings that are hidden from you. By following the process outlined above you can find them.
But what do you do once, you find them?
You dissolve the meanings using the Lefkoe Freedom Process. You can learn how to dissolve meaning using the tutorial found here.
To sum up:
Meaning drives us to fear of failure
You can find those meanings with the following steps:
- Imagine taking action and failing
- Notice the feelings and thoughts that arise
- Ask “What does that mean about me?” and “How might others see me?”
Once you find the meanings, dissolve them with the Lefkoe Freedom Process.
