Following up on my recent post about “fear of failure”, I came across a study that really makes perfect sense when you think about it. It concludes that fear of failure makes those with low confidence regarding a task procrastinate said task. On the other hand, fear of failure actually motivates those with high confidence to perform the task and perform it better.
The other deciding factor is Autonomy. A desire to complete the task. A vested interest, if you will. Someone with high confidence but no interest in the task at hand is more likely to procrastinate.
Thus, I’ve realized that, while I’ve been looking for a way to eliminate my fear of failure, I should be looking for a way to make this very powerful condition work in my favor.
How do we do it?
From Wikipedia:
Fear can be widely classified into two types: external fear and internal fear.
- External fear is caused by something outside of you which you are strongly motivated to avoid, for example: fear of spiders.
- Internal fear is something outside of you to which you link a negative emotion, for example: fear developed out of low self esteem.
Interesting how external fear uses the word “motivate” and internal fear, the words “low self esteem”. If we base ourselves off of our earlier statement, it would appear that your fear of failure needs to be an external one in order for it to be useful.
This does not mean that when you fail, you should blame it on external factors. You need to be able to accept your mistakes and learn from them. It’s more about believing that you will be so good at a task that only an external factor, out of your control, could contribute to your failure.
I wouldn’t be the first to say that if you believe you can do something and you are persistent, any success achievable. Perhaps these “fear of failure” concepts I’ve been toying with can offer us some insight into the mechanics behind how this strategy works.
Here is the podcast I heard talking about the “fear of failure” study I mentioned: http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/fear_of_failure
Feel free to drop your own thoughts in the comments.
