fear of failure « Conscious Transitions

Risk Aversion and Anxiety

By Sheryl Paul, on October 2nd, 2016

I’m standing on the edge of my life, as if on the shores of a cold but beautiful lake. I want to dive in but I’m scared, only the fear doesn’t sound like fear as much as doubt, anxiety, uncertainty, and ambivalence. What if I make a mistake? What if the water is too cold and I can’t breathe? What if there’s a better lake out there: warmer, smoother, less dangerous? I’m here but I do not move, too scared to fail, too scared to risk, too scared to live.

One of the hallmark characteristics of being on the sensitive-anxious-creative spectrum is the tendency to lean toward safety and away from risk. As sensitives who can see and imagine all possibilities, we’re constantly scanning the horizon and imagining everything that can go terribly awry in any situation. As I’ve written in other blog posts, this quality served us very well … Click here to continue reading...

Compassion or Comparison

By Sheryl Paul, on May 29th, 2016

My yoga teacher has said this phrase dozens of times, but one morning it went in differently and landed in the places where breath meets bone, where sinew aches with loss and the water in the pelvic bowl of my hips shimmered like a moonlit lake. The words traveled along ancient blood-lines to the place where ancestral memory digs a spade into foreign soil, where the grandmothers and great-grandmothers hummed the melodies of their lineage while baking the day’s bread and folded their pain in the flour.

Compassion rather than comparison. Connect to what’s needed in this moment instead of to what everyone else is doing or what you think you “should” be doing.

She cued a pose and I did something else. She cued another pose and I remained where I was, following my breath into the places that needed attention. The beginning of a poem filtered into … Click here to continue reading...

When You're Irritated With Your Partner

By Sheryl Paul, on August 31st, 2015

A client told me a few weeks ago that she’s been feeling irritated with her husband. Then, in the hushed tones I’ve come to identify immediately as shame, she asked, “Is that normal?” At which point I told her that my post entitled “When You Feel Irritated with Your Partner” receives the most hits of any blog on my site.

“Really?” she said, audibly relieved. “So it’s really normal?”

“Yes, really. Completely normal.”

The next day, synchronistically, my e-course moderator directed me to a deeply insightful post that one of the members wrote called “The Progress I’ve Made in Six Months”, which focused largely on getting underneath the irritation. With grateful permission, I’m sharing it here:

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In the past six months I feel like I have made quite a bit of progress. I am starting to understand my fear cycle and I’d like to share it with… Click here to continue reading...

The Fear of Making a Mistake

By Sheryl Paul, on July 26th, 2015

The fear of making a mistake and the fear of failure live at the heart of what keeps many people stuck. Whether you’re struggling with relationship anxiety, career stagnation, depression, or generalized anxiety, the fear of making a mistake creates a debilitating and frustrating state of paralysis where you simply can’t move forward and express the longings in your heart.

I’ve often received emails like the following, one of which sparked my initial inspiration to create the Trust Yourself program years ago:

I’ve been able to work through my relationship anxiety, but now I’m suffering from career anxiety. I long to move my career to the next level and start my own business, but my fear of failure and making a mistake get in the way. Every time I start to move forward, the chorus of negative voices start chattering in my ear about all the reasons why it won’t … Click here to continue reading...

The Imposter Syndrome

By Sheryl Paul, on July 19th, 2015

“When I do something well and have success, I feel like it’s a fluke.”

“I walk around feeling like a fraud. I don’t trust that I’m honestly capable of doing the things that I do.”

“I have this nagging sense that I’m going to be found out, like I’m a fake.”

A fluke. A fraud. A fake. The imposter syndrome. Thanks to the Internet, most people have heard of this insidious and demoralizing way of walking through the world, but few people know how it forms and what to do about it. Moving through life feeling like we’re going to be “found out” leads a subtle but chronic sense of anxiety. As such, it’s worth spending some time unraveling the elements that comprise this painful way of regarding oneself.

These are the common personality traits of those who suffer from the imposter syndrome:

Highly sensitive High achieving Perfectionist… Click here to continue reading...