How to play the Fear of Failure game.
Goal : Overcome the fear of failure.
Fear of failure is probably one of the major obstacles to your team’s success in the game of life.
Often self-limiting Hooligan beliefs are at play.
For example, the belief, if I attempt to lose weight I will fail and therefore damage my self-esteem and credibility, can create a fear that stops us taking the necessary action.
Or, I won’t join a gym because I’m not fit enough and will look silly working out.
If you never do anything, you will never fail. If you stay in your comfort zone, you will never grow and you will not get your players playing well.
If you have someone who never ventures outside their own half to avoid being caught out, then you have someone who will never develop into a top class player.
The great irony is that by avoiding stressful situations, you are actually setting yourself up for more anxiety in the future, and the more anxious you are the worse your performance.
All the research in sports psychology, points to the fact that anxiety reduces both physical and mental performance. The worse your performance the greater your anxiety.
All good managers and coaches will tell you they learn more about the team in defeat than they ever do in victory and failures should therefore be treated as learning experiences.
We spend most of our lives in fear of failure, trying to avoid it, but, look how many times an infant falls down when they are trying to walk, look how many times we fall off our bike when learning to ride, or how many times we fail at keepie uppie before we improve.
Failure should be something we celebrate as it shows us, it teaches us and we often learn a lot more from failure than success.
If you see problems as something bad, as something to avoid, then of course you won’t look forward to them, as they would represent a source of unhappiness in your life.
Instead, you need to change your perspective, so any problem instantly becomes a challenge, an opportunity, something you can learn from and grow, both as an individual and a team.
Think back to the real challenges you have faced in your life, the tough times. Were these not the biggest learning experiences of your life?
Whenever you are faced with a problem or a stressful situation then, you have to ask yourself and the rest of your team; what can you learn from this situation to make you a stronger team in the future?
Because if you want your players to grow and develop into diamonds, you have to expose them to the stresses and strains in life.
Premiership Health training principle: There is no such thing as failure only feedback.