Bet on Yourself

The entire process of becoming a Certified Life Coach was an experience that I will forever be grateful for. I was able to spend seven solid months working on myself all day, every day. I understand that there are very few people in the world who have had that privilege, and I am so deeply grateful for it. I was able to learn how to question my beliefs, my surroundings, my assumptions, my internal dialogue, my habits, my actions, the things I say out loud, my thoughts... the list goes on. I also had the absolute honour of being coached weekly by my peers. To have had the opportunity to work collaboratively with a group of people who are striving to be the best version of themselves - so that they are better able to serve others -was a great gift to me.

To simplify things, I'm going to use the word "failure" in this discussion. I actually don't like that word. I think it's a social construct. I also think it's used both subjectively and objectively with a negative bias, and can be really harmful if it's not considered and dissected. But we all are familiar with what it means, so I'll use it.

There are so many things I learned about the concept of failure during this great process of self-discovery and introspection. So many. Failure is one of my favourite ideas to roll around and examine and decide things about. As a transformational change coach as well as an addiction and recovery coach, failure is a part of the game. Not all your changes are going to work as you had intended them to. And with addiction and recovery, the road has lots of twists and turns. I am familiar with failure.

What I want to discuss today is the human propensity to fail prematurely.

Doing new things is scary. Your brain is designed to resist change because historically, change is dangerous. Change means there is a risk, and in order to survive we have had an aversion to risk. With risk comes the potential to lose something - money, security, habits, friends, anything that is comfortable and familiar. Your brain isn't really able to separate the risk of, say, changing your career, from the risk of not surviving in the wild. The fear of failure is what can hold us back from trying new things.

The problem is that even when we overcome that fear of failure and actually strike out and try a new thing, our brain still tries to protect us. You know when there is potential for something to go "wrong", and you spend time imagining what it would feel like if it did actually go wrong? This can be experienced in our reality, or even our entertainment. We pre-emptively mourn the loss of people, real or fictional, who we think we might lose.

When we write exams that matter to us, we say things like "I think I did well, but I'm not really sure, I might have bombed it!" When we start a new fitness class we say things like "I'll probably be the worst one there, I'm so unfit!" When we apply for a new job, and get an interview, we discuss how there were probably so many other candidates that may fit better than ourselves. We present a gift that we've worked hard on and say "oh it's nothing, it's not even that good". We don't share the good news of a pregnancy too early, in case it doesn't come to term. Not counting our chickens before they hatch is something that is taught to us at a very young age.

Basically, don't ever count on anything that you want until it's in your hands, or you might feel disappointed/hurt/sad/embarrassed etc. when it doesn't come to fruition. The theory is if you feel a little bit of those "negative" emotions beforehand, feeling them when you actually need to will be less painful.

With the tendency to anticipate the potential of failing, we create thoughts about failure. We create thoughts about what we will do if we fail, what it means about ourselves if we fail, what others might think of us in that failure, what consequences that failure might deliver... all kinds of noise in our brains. Because our thoughts create our feelings, we are then left feeling all the "negative" feelings that come from those thoughts. If you are feeling those downtrodden emotions, you are not going to be very driven. You're going to get tired, uninspired, uncertain. These feelings can actually make you lose motivation to keep pursuing the change that you wanted to make in the first place.

So if you are chasing something, pay attention to what thoughts you are having about it.

What kinds of emotions are cultivating for yourself during this experience?

Are you betting on yourself, or against?

What would it feel like to bet on yourself in all your endeavors?

Everyone is going to experience defeat, grief, disappointment, shame, embarrassment etc. at some stage during this life. It's necessary; this is the balance that allows for all the joyous emotions to exist.

But is it useful to experience these emotions in advance?

How is that motivating or inspiring you to achieve your goal?

How different would it feel to work towards your goal assuming that you will succeed?