Tamara wasn’t allowed to cook on Saturday. Yet she served a warm, home-cooked meal to her family that day.
Tamara was a Jew living in Lithuania in the early 1900s and so was not allowed to work on the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sunset on Saturday. She heated a bean stew in the oven on Friday, then turned the oven off just before sunset. By Saturday the food had been kept warm and was ready to serve.
Leaving food in the oven overnight might seem odd if we didn’t know that rules about the Sabbath were driving her choices. Now it makes sense. Similarly, when we have a fear of failure, it too makes sense once we understand the meanings that drive those feelings.
What meanings cause fear of failure?
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 Occurring 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 Occurring 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 Occurring Process.
You can learn more about how to use the Lefkoe Occurring Process by reading this article.
