...Fear of Failure Fear of failing, or atychiphobia, has been present in one form or another in everyones lives. What a failure means to one person is completely variable to another and what matters most is how you handle it and go forward afterwards. William Faulkner stated, “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it.” Some people become so stricken with the image of failure that they become immobilized and cannot even bring themselves to start the task at hand. There are others however who embrace the challenge and view failure as a learning curve and opportunity not to the make the same mistake twice. Failure exists in every person’s life and can define our existence and character. Understanding that fear jeopardizes success and from failure we gain new insights, the question arises as to why people are so afraid to fail in the first place. People like to understand where things originate and how they became as they are so let’s discuss fear of failure and it’s roots. As a child in school for example, commonly if a child fails they are not given rewards. In some school culture the football player that doesn’t kick the football highest is a wimp, the one who failed that last math test is dumb, or if you didn’t make in on the basketball team you’re a loser. The harsh reality is, many of us have felt like other people judge our failures. Our focus is emphasized too much on visible success and not the ways...
Words: 903 - Pages: 4
...------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Find: Bottom of Form MagazineArchive Embracing the Fear of Failure By Carlin Flora , published on October 26, 2004 "He who never makes mistakes, never makes anything," goes an English Proverb. Unless we learn to embrace failure (whether it's led by an unavoidable mishap, a moral lapse, or a risk miscalculated), we remain snugly tucked inside our comfort zone. The pressure to be perfect leaves us tip-toeing around family members or coasting on automatic pilot at work, feeling safe but stagnated—and not quite alive. From vaccines to Velcro, many inventions were spawned from accidents, seeming failures. But when Fiona Lee, psychology and business professor at the University of Michigan, explored which conditions help people experiment with novel ideas, she uncovered an interesting phenomenon: "Managers talk a lot about innovation and being on the cutting edge, but on an individual level, many people are not willing to try new things." What's holding us back? A fear of failure. "Corporate America has very little tolerance for failure," Lee reports. Compensation is typically based on tasks well-done, not spectacular (and costly) failures that could eventually produce breakthroughs. Bosses preach innovation, and yet they hover over workers, poised to slap wrists. Lee's study concluded that rewarding employees who repeatedly try new things and fail leads to more innovation and more long-term success. But the...
Words: 692 - Pages: 3
...Bill Cosby once said, "In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure." In many ways, this statement is profound and true. To get anywhere in life, we all must first have the drive and the desire to even begin the journey to a better place. However, I believe the fear of failure and failure itself also plays an important role in changing and propelling our lives. This year has been the hardest ones I have ever experienced in my life. I was quick to learn that Senior year in particular not only gives me the highest degree of possible freedom, but also holds an entirely new set of expectations and responsibility over my head. Turning eighteen was like having a huge pile of stones unleashed onto my chest, then being expected to breathe with the unaccustomed weight. I have never been expected to work nearly as hard as I have this year alone, but this same year has been one of the most exhilarating I have ever experienced. This may be mainly due to the journey that I have had, even if I am still at the beginning of it, and it has been an uphill climb the entire way. I never realized that I wanted to become...
Words: 996 - Pages: 4
...“Never let the fear of failure be an excuse for not trying. Society tells us that to fail is the most terrible thing in the world, but I know it isn’t. Failure is part of what makes us human.” Amber Deckers, Ella Mental and the Good Sense Guide It is universally accepted that from ancient times humanity makes everything possible to comprehend or invent something new and to develop what has already been discovered. To be quite plain it cannot go without mistakes in this case. In spite of all our wishes and intentions, making false steps turns out to be inseparable part of our life. Moreover failure is considered to be one of the greatest man’s fears. There is no need to deny the fact that up-to-date life is sure to lay high claims to every person and to enhance the importance of competition. Seeking after perfection and willing to make some favorable impression one, in contrast, grows weaker before failure. Frankly speaking the very point, not to be forgotten, is that perfection exists only in our imagination but not in real life. Thus understanding of such thing can become the only way to accept one’s own and somebody else’s failure. You can’t but take into account that all greatest discoveries happened mostly by trial and error. Society imposes certain conditions, according to what it can result in the fear of misfortune that leads us, in turn, to more sizable blunder. Right for mistake means often the right for some innovation, research, experiment...
Words: 446 - Pages: 2
...Every person has faced fear at least once in their life. Fear of death, rejection, and the worst, failure. This fear is plainly shown in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart through Okonkwo’s hamartia that moves him towards his eventual demise. Achebe proves that living solely by fear of failure will create the very thing one’s life is motivated to destroy. Okonkwo’s fear of failure manifests itself in five distinct ways: Fear of following in his father’s footsteps, fear of becoming feminine, fear of losing religion, fear of discrediting his family name, and fear of disgracing the Ibo gods. These fears accumulate under the fear of failure that acts as Okonkwo’s hamartia, motivating him to commit suicide at the conclusion of the book. Achebe begins Things Fall Apart with a lengthy description of Okonkwo’s past, including his lazy...
Words: 1167 - Pages: 5
...Skin turns ghost pale, sweat beads down your face, the hair on your neck stands up and your heart begins to beat like a drum. Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, scary, or undesirable. It is an unavoidable emotion experienced by all living creatures. What makes a person afraid? What is it that decides what someone does and doesn’t fear? The amount of anxiety a person experiences in a given time depends on several factors such as culture, past experiences, and upbringing. Natural born fears are also present, and very hard to understand. Fear is a diverse emotion that has been a commonality throughout humanity since humans first walked the planet. Personally, two grave fears I have are the fear of heights and the fear of failure. Acrophobia, the fear of heights, is one of the most common fears on the earth. In fact, nearly five percent of the world’s...
Words: 737 - Pages: 3
...the contact of the present study learning style refer to the model of learning propose by Honey and Mumford (1992). According to Honey and Mumford (1992), learning has taken place when either or both of the following situations apply where an individual knows something not previously known, and can show it as well as an individual is able to do something he or she was previously unable to do. Learning styles are diverse ways that a person can learn. It's commonly believed that most people favor some particular method of interacting with, taking in, and processing stimuli or information. It is also facilitates students to contribute using their own preferred learning style in order to cope with fear of failure in their performance. The key elements that can avoid fear of failure among students by understanding of learning style preference which has impact on the individual’s...
Words: 1571 - Pages: 7
...The Fear (The major point of my paper is about the fear that people feel when they try to change and what they should do to overcome the fear.) Thesis Statement: As we see the characters, Wallace and Ronald Pryzbylewski in the Wire, overcoming fear can be a first step to change. (Introduction: This paragraph explains what I will cover in my writing.) People do not change easily. Many people fall in love with similar people and hurt because of similar reasons. They recognize their mistakes, but make the same mistakes over and over again. Why? One reason is they are doing it wrong. But another reason runs deeper. They are afraid to change. The decided personality is not changed easily like the foot stamp on the wet cement. Although the reasons for resisting change can be external and situational, I claim that the most damaging fears are internal because the individual is with the problem and situation. As we see the characters, Wallace and Ronald Pryzbylewski in the Wire, overcoming fear can be a first step to change. Four of the most prevalent common fears are: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism, and fear of the new thing. (Give two examples that whether overcome the fears or not. These three example paragraphs show how they overcome the fears and how to change or not.) Here are examples from the Wire, the TV show. One is the person who overcome the fear, Ronald Pryzbylewski, and another is the person who does not overcome the fear, Wallace. Pryzbylewski...
Words: 1672 - Pages: 7
...for Learning from Failure – Amy C. Edmondson – Strategy Failure is being looked at the wrong way (Edmondson, 2011). Failure can be an important learning tool for organizations around the globe. If analyzed correctly and quickly, but also implemented effectively, failure can transform negative situations into positive growth. Failure is generally discouraged and instinctively passed onto someone else if possible; this is called the Blame Game (Edmondson, 2011). The Blame Game (discovered at childhood) discourages people from taking the blame for a mistake or failure. It leads to unsolved problems and lessons unlearned. Leaders must combat the Blame Game with the construction of a learning culture. A learning culture “makes people feel both comfortable with and responsible for surfacing and learning from failures” (Edmondson, 2011). To build an effective learning culture a leader must strongly encourage a realization of what happened or caused the problem-not who did it (Edmondson, 2011). A learning culture deals with failure in three ways: detecting, analyzing, and experimentation (Edmondson, 2011). Detecting failure is important because the longer it remains unsurfaced the worse the damages will be. It’s also crucial to effective analyze failure. Companies shy away from this because it makes everyone uncomfortable and harms self-esteem (Edmondson, 2011). Analyzing failure obtains wisdom from the situation, and the lesson is learned. Finally, promoting failure through experimentation...
Words: 598 - Pages: 3
...giants in our lives have different names of fear, loneliness, doubt, discouragement, failure, jealousy, worry, anger, guilt, and procrastination. Just like the biblical ancients overcame their giants, we too must overcome our giants. In doing so we must allow God to help us in the process in knowing that He is with us and will empower us in overcoming. Fear Fear is a major problem in the land of the giants. This giant comes in so many forms. Fear has gripped us all at some point in our lives. Thousands are affected daily in some type of fear or another. But fear is a common part of the fabric of living. Fear gives us burst of strength and speed when we need and is a good thing in a survival instinct situation. When fear becomes negative it then becomes a phobia. This is when fear and reason does match up. When fear becomes ill rational, it becomes a shackle that bind us and put us into bondage. This bondage will keep us from the routine things in life of working, playing, living and serving God. There are so many varieties of fears. This is a listing of six general categories that we face in fear: poverty, criticism, loss of love, illness, old age and death. When we read the bible we can see that those living in biblical times often were tormented by the same fears that we face today. It would seem that Christians would not have the same challenges with fear as the unbeliever instead the fears are the same. Fear does five major things in God’s will for...
Words: 6806 - Pages: 28
...these paradigms, we are able to reestablish our creativity that was once blunted. It is essential that individuals rediscover their creative confidence. It is possible to gain confidence in an individual’s ability to attain what they originally sought out to do. In the article “Reclaim Your Creative Confidence” by Tom & David Kelly, we analyze the four fears that prevent us from realizing our creative potential and the actions people have taken to overcome them. The first fear analyzed was the fear of the messy unknown. The authors describe this fear as: being afraid to step out of comfort zones to solve a solution. In the article, an example is given where students create a sleeping bag to save low-birth-weight and premature babies every year. This idea came about because the team was willing to throw themselves into unfamiliar territory. Many times individuals are afraid of the unknown because they have been programmed into one way of thinking and they don’t want to take risks to have the great successes. People have been taught that failure is bad. You cannot have success without failure though. I believe this fear relates to perceptual blocks described by Dr. Couger. A perceptual block is an obstacle (or obstacles) that prevents us from clearly perceiving either the problem itself or information needed to see the problem. These relate to each other because people perceive problems as worse than they are and people don’t...
Words: 929 - Pages: 4
...There is many themes that are presented in Thing Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Fear was a theme that stood out in the book. Okonkwo fears becoming like his father, Ekwefi fears losing her daughter, and Nwoye fears his father’s wrath. Okonkwo allows his fear to take him, causing him to change himself throughout the book. Allowing fear causes people to act in negative ways bringing negative consequences with those actions. First, fear is what mainly controls Okonkwo. Okonkwo is afraid of 2 thing: the fear of being weak and failing and the fear of change. Okonkwo saw and learned from the thing that his father did and what he was as a person. In chapter 2, it says “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated...
Words: 600 - Pages: 3
...Failure As Confucius once said “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.” Some of history’s most influential people knew exactly what it was like to fail numerous times before they became successful. Walt Disney, one of the most creative and imaginative people was fired by a newspaper company because he was said to have “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Abraham Lincoln one of the most influential leaders of the United States, had multiple failed business attempts, and while in the armed forces went to war as a captain and was degraded to a private when he returned.(Michalko, 6,8) Success takes hard work, dedication, long hours, pain, and a lot of disappointment. If some of the most influential people in American history have failed then why are others so afraid of it? When I asked a group of people about what they feared most when they tried something new most of them replied “failing.” When asked why, they didn’t really know. They just didn’t like the idea of not being successful. Successful people like to achieve high standards; they become so afraid of failure that it turns into a handicap. We let the fear hold us back from our true potential. This fear causes some people to not try something altogether because they are so afraid of the feeling associated with not accomplishing something. Today, we live in a society where failing or messing up is viewed as unacceptable, people want to do something...
Words: 1349 - Pages: 6
...Atychiphobia, the fear of failure, leads mankind to falter in their path to success and to fail in achieving their dreams which require failure. Aaron Burr is a man who despises failure to the point that causes him to kill Alexander Hamilton and lose the presidential race. He attempts to do what other people want him to do rather than have ideals and beliefs unique to himself and does not “let them know what you’re against or what you’re for” (Miranda 24). The lack of personal motivation also plays a role Burr’s loss of the presidency. I identify with Burr more greatly than Hamilton because, like Burr, I fear failing in many aspects of life and do not always complete tasks because I personally want to. Life is a series of failures developing...
Words: 497 - Pages: 2
...were shaking. So I decided to drive away, and went home. It shocked me and I was terrified of driving. I told my dad that I do not want to drive anymore. My dad always takes me to places like work, school, etc. One day, I saw my dad looks so exhausted from work, and I know it is time to stop bother him. I decided to relearn everything and to face my fear. A month later, I finally got my license. Driving has been one of the most rewarding thing I have done. The freedom to go anywhere is great, I enjoy driving, and I am glad I was brave enough to face my fear and overcame it....
Words: 468 - Pages: 2
