4 reflections for overcoming fear of failure
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hello friends, let's discuss four reflections for facing anxiety with maturity. We all face situations in life when huge things are at stake, when our very life seems to be on the line in sports events, especially for those which we have prepared throughout our life. If we are not able to perform, we feel that my life itself will be wasted.
At such times, it's vital that we learn to redefine success accurately. Success is not just a destination, it is also a direction. When we are going on a journey, there may be many significant landmarks that we may cross and crossing them gives us a sense of achievement.
But sometimes if a particular road is blocked and we have to take some other road, we may not reach a particular landmark. But that does not mean that our journey has stopped. If we equate success with a destination, the inability to achieve that destination may seem like a total failure.
But what do we mean when we say success is a direction? Ultimately, success is about bringing out our best, actualizing our potentials, doing justice to our talents. When we live according to the values of doing our best, in a mood of offering to the world what we have been given, then living according to those values becomes the driving force of our life through the ups and downs. Albert Einstein said, seek to be a person of value, not a person of success.
If we live according to values, the value of doing our best, then success will be a natural result that will come sooner or later. Of course, we need to perform to the best of our capacities to succeed. At the same time, becoming too emotionally invested in the results of certain things which are not in our control can decrease our capacity to perform.
When we are too worried about something, that can impede our ability to do our best. So, how can we avoid such paralyzing or disempowering worry? Firstly, we have to know that worry itself is not bad. Fear, stress, tension, these are just natural and normal human reactions to uncertainty.
Just as if we are in a cold place, our body may start shivering. That is a normal reaction to the environment filled with frigidity. Similarly, when there is uncertainty in the environment, the natural reaction at the psychological level is anxiety.
What we do after the anxiety comes, that is vital for our healthy or unhealthy response to that anxiety. Fear is natural, fearfulness is not. Fear makes us aware of the danger so that we can focus and do the best.
Fearfulness means that the danger or the trouble or the failure, any of these thoughts simply occupy and dominate our minds and we become powerless to do anything constructive. When fear starts morphing into fearfulness, at that time, we can check that using four thought reflections. So, I will explain these in terms of the acronym fear.
F E A R. F is focus, E is engage, A is arise and R is release. So, F focus. When we start becoming fearful, essentially, there is a disconnect between our physical situation and our mental disposition.
There is a particular problem out there, but taking that problematic situation as a trigger, our mind starts wandering here, there and everywhere. What if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? You come for athletic event and you hear that our competitor has got the best coach in the field and we start thinking, oh, how can I compete with such a person? How will I succeed? Oh, I'm going to fail. What if I fail? My life will be ruined.
And in that way, when we start thinking, essentially, the thoughts have become disconnected from our actions. And at the level of the thoughts, a horror movie is being unfolded. In that horror movie, we choke under moments of pressure and we fail.
Now, none of that horror movie has actually turned into a reality. And none of it may ever turn into reality. If we can stop the play of the horror movie in our mind.
So, F means focus. Focus means we ask ourselves the question, what exactly is the problem? We need to separate the situation from the imagination. So, what exactly is the problem? If I fail in this athletic event, what exactly is the problem? That is a possibility that may happen.
What exactly is the problem? The problem is that I am not prepared enough. That is very vague. What exactly is the problem? The problem is that my competitor has got a better coach than what I have got.
What exactly is the problem? The problem is that I do not feel confident that I will be able to perform as well as I need to. So, when we repeatedly ask ourselves the question, what exactly is the problem? What exactly is the problem? What exactly is the problem? We zero in on the exact situation that needs to be dealt with. Otherwise, in the mind's imagination, we start seeing grimmer and grimmer future scenarios about which we have practically no control.
So, in every situation in our life, there are some things in our control and some things out of our control. The more we focus on the things that are out of our control, the more we start feeling powerless. And when we become fearful, we are focusing entirely on future possibilities and letting ourselves become paralyzed in the present.
So, to become fearful is to become powerless. And we become fearful when we let our mind go here, there and everywhere. If we can pull the mind back to the present by asking the question, what exactly is the problem right now? Then instead of seeing a big haze of horror, we see one specific issue that needs to be dealt with.
Then we come to the second point, E, that is engage. Engage means that we focus on what can I do about this right now? When the physical and the mental are disconnected from each other, then at the mind's level, we are just going round and round and letting ourselves feel powerless. But when we come to the actionable items, ask the question, what can I do about this right now? Engage.
So, we get our consciousness out of the mind and into the body, into practical actions that we can do. I have got one week for practicing. Let me practice wholeheartedly.
I have got one day. Let me review my plans, my strategies and keep them in the forefront of my consciousness. Let me take deep breaths to calm myself down.
And this way, we get down to actionable items. What can I do about this right now? When we see that there is something we can do about the situation, that itself gives us a control, gives us a sense of power and purpose. Otherwise, the problem appears to be like mist.
It is there everywhere, but nothing is in our control. So, what can I do about this right now? Usually, in moments of stress, taking deep breaths is very helpful in getting the mind off its horror movie show and getting it back into the reality as it is. After engage, after we decide on some actionable items and start doing those actionable items, then the next is arise.
Arise means that we are in a particular situation, which we have to do the best that we can, but we also need to stay aware of the bigger picture. Arise means raise our consciousness upwards to recognize that we are bigger than the race we are running. We are bigger than the match we are playing.
We are bigger than the particular competition we are participating in. We have been through many such events in the past, maybe not a competition of this magnitude, but we all have had our crisis of various kinds in our own lives. So, we have gone through that, we have survived that, we have been strengthened through that.
This is where spiritual wisdom can help us in seeing the bigger picture. Spiritual wisdom explains to us that we are bigger than our biology and we are bigger than our psychology. That means we are not our body, we are not our mind.
We are spiritual beings, beyond the physical and the mental is a spiritual. We are on a long journey in which every moment is significant, but we are bigger than every moment that may be there, no matter what its significance. Failure is never fatal, success is never final.
Our journey keeps going on and on. When we understand that we at our core are indestructible, that gives us access to a power that is inexhaustible. We are going to evolve if we just approach the situation with a positive purposeful attitude and do our best in that situation.
So, when we get caught in the situation, then we catastrophize any negativities that may emerge. But when we rise above the situation, then we contextualize them. We see them in the context of a bigger picture and knowing that we have survived through many ups and downs in our life, we know that we can not only go through this, but we can also grow through this.
So, here we are talking about taking our mental camera zoom and it is getting dissipated looking at a horror movie. We bring it back to focus on the exact reality before us and then while preparing to face the reality, we also zoom it upwards to see the bigger picture with spiritual wisdom. So, arise, we are bigger than our situation.
If you were trapped in a hurricane and we could see the water level rising in the flood, we found that we can rise to a higher level in the building, we are safe. Similarly, when we understand that we are at our core spiritual and indestructible, we rise upwards and thus we can calm ourselves down. And then last is our release.
In every situation in life, there are certain things which are not in our control and letting go of those situations, letting go of those worries, helps us to focus on that which is in our control. We let go of things to catch hold of our thoughts and to focus those thoughts in purposeful action. Again, spiritual wisdom helps us to understand that we are not just isolated beings in a hostile or uncaring cosmos.
There is a bigger plan and a bigger purpose for everything and we are parts of something far bigger than ourselves. When we work in a mood of contribution for seeking our own evolution through offering our optimal performance, then we understand that we are participating in a higher plan. Success may manifest, success may not manifest, but our evolution and the success thereof will continue.
We are able to release by remembering that there is a higher plan and purpose to our life and thus with our energy focused on what is in our control, we can bring out our best, do justice to our potentials and fulfill our destiny. I'll summarize. I spoke about how during the defining moments of our life, we can redefine success not just as a destination but as a direction.
And inner success which is the foundation for outer success is based on doing justice to our talents, bringing out our best in a mood of contribution and service. And worry is a natural and necessary response to uncertainty. But when from fear, we become fearful, the thought of the problem just dominates and pervades our consciousness, then it makes us powerless.
How to deal with fear? Four reflections. F, focus. What exactly is the problem? By thinking and asking this question and again and again, we stop the horror movie in the mind and bring our focus to that which is a concrete, tangible, addressable issue.
E, engage. What can I do about this right now? Asking this question repeatedly helps us zero in on some actionable item thereby giving us a sense of power and purpose. A is arise.
We raise our consciousness to see the big picture. We are bigger than our biology and psychology. We are indestructible.
And meditating on this gives us access to a power that is inexhaustible. And R is release. By letting go of that which is not in our control, we can focus on that which is in our control and thus bring out our best and fulfill our destiny.
Thank you.