To be honest I was terrified in October when my 9-year-old son came to me and said that he wanted to show a steer in the fair. Thoughts of him getting trampled by a 1200lb beast kept crossing my mind but he was determined that no matter what he could and would be able to handle this animal. For weeks, I tried talking him out of it and trying to encourage him to show a smaller animal like a pig or sheep. No matter what I told him he still wanted to show a beef so I finally gave up and decided it was time to support him in this effort.
What I was trying to instill in my child was my view of what success looked like. I was trying to teach him a comfort zone of what the highest level he could achieve while still giving him a base level. I wanted him to have success and not feel like a failure. However, I didn’t want him to reach out of what I saw as realistic and/or achievable.
What I was doing to my son is subconsciously what people do to themselves to keep themselves from failing and on the reverse end from achieving too much success. We all have an internal view of what we are capable of and we use that in life to keep us in this comfort zone. An example would be when you are not doing well at work such as not getting a lot of sales closed we realize I am better than this and work extremely hard to not fail. During that time of hard work, we are laser focused and determined to get out of our rut/low sales cycle. Deals start closing and we start making money then the worst thing ever happens we start feeling like it must be a fluke so we start slowing down. There is no way I am this good, is what you start thinking. You start to fear success and do what you need to keep yourself in the “acceptable” zone of what you see yourself to be.
How do you battle against the fear of success and the fear of failure? What I have done is a combination of multiple activities. One being positive affirmations daily. This helps me to have permission to dream big and forgiveness to fail. Another activity I use in this battle to achieve success is goal setting with S.M.A.R.T goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) and set my weekly activities around hitting these goals. The last thing I do is dream big! If I see myself as living my dream the comfort zone of what I see as something I can do gets pushed higher.
I learned from my son what happens when you don’t fear failure or fear success. What you do is just live your dream. He knew going into showing what would be expected of him. He also had a small idea of what amount of work he would need to put in. His one goal was to work as hard as he could, enjoy the process as it happened, and not care if he won or lost. The result at the end was that he won Grand Champion Novice Showman. He was the youngest one out there by two years and he had the biggest smile. Thank goodness, he didn’t listen to his mom who just wanted to keep him in her world view of what success is.
You might also be interested in:
