SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, it's Maureen Chana here. Welcome to episode one of Lead to Excel podcast. I am so thrilled to bring this podcast to you. It's something I've been talking about for a very long time, and I'm so excited that it's now a reality. This premier episode is titled Overcoming Fear of Failure. Since I discovered the power of the brain, it's been life-changing for me and for every single person that I've worked with. In the past two decades, research has revealed that the brain has a surprising level of neuroplasticity, which means an ability to change its structure and reorganize its patterns of reacting. Do you ever wonder what's happening inside your brain when you feel anxious or worried? Well, that's what we are going to look at today because many leaders and individuals are saddled with a high degree of defensiveness and a deep need to be right all the time. Most times that's simply out of fear. So in this session, we will learn how to use neuroscience to overcome fear. We will also look at why people are fearful and learn skills and practical tools to become fearless and limitless. So fasten your belt because you're now going to learn powerful techniques of how to adjust and fix your attention so that you can release the fears holding you from taking appropriate action to achieve your goals. You're going to learn what empowering questions you can ask yourself to eliminate conscious fears. And also what fear of success really means and how to actually get rid of it forever. You're going to be able to use evidence to dispute and diffuse your inner critic. It's so sad because I constantly hear relentless self-criticism from entrepreneurs, from leaders, from business owners about how bad they are at managing their time, about how they're ruining their business, about how they want to reach their goals but find themselves procrastinating. And how often they step away from actually doing things that they know that they should be doing. Comfortable in action is not an option if you want to progress in life. Same as self-pity, feeling sorry for yourself, not taking responsibility and making yourself a victim. It's time to break out of this fear circle and actually take responsibility for your inactions by understanding what's going on in your brain and why it happens so that you can now do something about it. So let's dive in and get started. Right. So the title today is overcoming fear of failure. And if I just start by asking those people on to just define what you see as failure, what is it that you feel is preventing you feel that you want to achieve, but you've not been able to achieve yet? So if you just put something in the chat to get us started, failure. You know, it's one of the key things that prevents people from achieving what they want to achieve. And there are a lot of fears that you tend to find. Now you have fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking foolish, fear of public speaking. The question is what difficulty is confronting you? Okay, so we've got something here going beyond what you know. So that fear of judgment, exactly. And that's really a common one. Now, but the question then is what causes fear? Why do we experience fear? And that's really what I want to discuss today. Now, one of the main things that we find with fear is it comes back to how the brain sees fear. Now, the main function of the brain is to protect us. So anything that the brain is doing, as long as we understand that what it's doing is simply protecting us from what it perceives as a threat. Now, so if you're doing anything, the main thing that the brain doesn't like is uncertainty. So once it sees anything or identifies something as uncertainty, the first thing it does is to try and protect you. And that's where the whole concept of fear comes in. Because when the brain sees it as something uncertain, the first thing it will do is look inside your memory to see if there's anything that it can relate to, anything that you know it can identify with, with this new action you're about to take, or something different. And once it doesn't identify it, the emotional center of the brain, which is the amygdala, so those on video can see the amygdala is the small pear-shaped organ in inside the brain, in the emotional and the limbic system. So the amygdala is activated. And when the amygdala is activated, the first thing it does is obviously using oxygen, so it takes oxygen from the frontal part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, which is our thinking brain. So once it does that, your thinking brain is deactivated, so you can think straight, you're not able to make effective decisions, and then your amygdala is now hypersensitized. If you don't control the amygdala, that oversensitization will carry on and keep the prefrontal cortex deactivated. So now, when that happens, you find yourself now experiencing a lot of anxiety, stress, worries, and the emotional center that is now looking for connections around the brain, you find that you're now going over thinking of even more things that make you be more worried. So you're going into memory now to probably remember the last time you attempted something and it didn't work, or somebody told you you couldn't do something. So you're now going into memory to pull up all those things that even make you more frightened and more worried and more fearful. So that's the main reason why a lot of people experience that fear. So, and the main thing is in the subconscious, what you have is a lot of past experiences. But the key now is to make sure that you now be in control of what you're thinking. So to be able to make sure that your sub your conscious brain is in control and not letting your emotional brain take over. So to be able to do that, what you do is in essence put the brakes on the emotional center of the brain. If you're driving and something comes right in front of you, the first thing you do is to apply your brakes even before you think. And that's literally what we are saying is to be able to apply the brakes on the brain. And the brake is now putting a brake on the emotional center so that your prefrontal cortex, that's the thinking part of the brain, can be reactivated for you to be able to think and take that decision. And the one of the main things is just asking yourself, why am I afraid? Is it real? The you know, this thought I'm having, is it actually a thought that is that is truthful or is it one that is actually not? Because in most in most cases, a lot of things that we worry about never happen anyway. So looking at the brain in terms of how it causes anxiety and how it creates worry, the main thing now is for us to be aware of what we're thinking. It's being aware of your beliefs, it's being aware of your thoughts, it's being aware of your of you know the past experiences and not letting those hinder you from being able to then go on to achieve what you want to achieve. And one question is do you ever wonder what's happening that it's making you panicky? And it's that same concept of that emotional center taking over the prefrontal cortex or deactivating it because it's using that part of the oxygen, it's using the oxygen that is going there. Another thing is as much as it's using the oxygen going to the prefrontal cortex, it's also using oxygen in our gut area and our urinary tract system. I don't know if if you've ever been in a situation whereby either you or someone you know has been so fearful that they end up wetting themselves. That's the same concept, is the energy being drained out of the urinary system. So the key is to take that control back, is to be able to say, no, I'm not going to let my amygdala, which is the emotional, um, the emotional, emotional organ take over my brain. I'm not going to allow the amygdala hijack my brain. And that whole concept is known as an amygdala hijack. But I'm not I'm now going to do is to be in control, is to think, is to stop, is to rephrase that negative belief that I'm having and tell myself that really I can do this. You know, that I can do this. Now the question is, what do you need to do? You know, and it might be learning a new skill, it might be finding out from other people what you need to do, but it's being able to make that decision and take appropriate actions to enable you to achieve what you want. And I'm just going to look at a question that came in that I want to address because it's actually a good question that relates to fear. And the question was: how can you keep your joy when you're going through stressful situations? How can you maintain being joyful even when you don't feel like it? So, how can you find joy in taking a challenge instead of being stopped by fear or being anxious about it? And what are we really afraid about? How can we create work environments where failure and experimentation is supported? So I'll take the first part how to find joy in taking a challenge instead of being stopped by fear or being anxious. The key is being able to change that negative belief. So I call it rephrasing. So it's recognizing it first, that recognizing the thoughts that is causing the fear and being able to then change the narrative. For example, you might face a big, maybe they've you've got a big project at work, and you're really worried whether you'll be able to do it effectively. And one of the thoughts you might be having is that I'm not good enough. Will I be able to do this? I'm not qualified enough. Will I be able to achieve this? And it's being able to change that narrative and say to yourself, Am I actually qualified to do this? And in most cases, you find that you are. And even if you don't have all the qualifications, the fact is that nobody is perfect. It's being able to tell yourself, you know what, I'm going to do my damn best and do this and do it very well. And I know and I believe in myself. And that brings us back to that whole thing of self-belief. I believe I can do this, and it's changing that narrative. I remember once when I went for a meeting, and we're said, we're told to say something about ourselves. And the first thing I said was, I mentioned my name, and I'm, you know, I love challenges. And the first thing someone said to me, How can you enjoy challenges? And I said, I really thrive on challenges. And it's being able to see things that way because when you keep telling yourself that you enjoy challenges, you love challenges, they don't present themselves anymore as something that frightens you or worries you. But instead, you look at them with a lot of anticipation about the end goal. So you're then really anticipating the joy of achieving and getting to the end successfully, as opposed to just um being in a place where you're then worrying about the process. But this time is now changing the narrative where you're actually enjoying the process and it becomes fun. And once you do that, the same principle applies because as you tell yourself that I'm enjoying this and I'm or I'm going to enjoy this, I'm going to enjoy this project or enjoy this process, what you're doing is keeping your amygdala calm, and then your prefrontal cortex is able to function more effectively. And the fact is that the prefrontal cortex is really linked heavily to the emotional center. So when the when the prefrontal cortex is really activated and stimulated, it's able to work well with the amygdala, and that's why you then have that joy. That's where the joy comes from. So it's being able to make it a thing of joy and not and not something that is causing you anxiety. And the other part was what are we really afraid of? Good question. And I think that's the question to really ask yourself. What am I really afraid of? Bringing it back to the brain. What the brain is afraid of is uncertainty. It's afraid of being doing something that it's not sure about that could lead you to danger. And the whole as the whole point of that is, as we said, the brain is there to protect us, and that's why we have the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism. And always give the example that if suddenly a lion or a snake comes in here because I can't stand snakes, I personally will run, and that's the flight. Some other person might freeze, and some people might, you know, go into the fight mode where they're looking for something to either chase the lion away or get rid of the snake. But you see, the fight, flight of fries mechanisms we have was if we go back to years ago when you know man lived outside and had to fend for himself and defend himself from predators, and those mechanisms were so heightened that we needed them. And you know that there are some predators that detect their preys by movement, and that's where the freeze mechanism comes in. But now what we need to add, what we need to do is adapt those mechanisms to our environment at the moment, so that anything that the brain is you know sees as a threat, what it does is it will keep us away from it. So if a threat is something new, a new project, a new business, starting going into, you know, either moving from one job to another or taking on something completely new or moving into a moving to a new country or new town, just doing something that you've not done before. Or doing something and then feeling, or what will people think if it doesn't work? All those are the threats and those are the things that the brain tells you to avoid. So that's what basically it's afraid of. It's doing something that it perceives will fail, or something that it perceives will not would put you in a play in a state that compromises you. And then the other part was how can we create work environments where failure and experimentation is supported, and this is a great one because this really is one that organizations need to truly embrace, so it's one that most organizations need to take on board because most times what you find is in organizations, people are not allowed to kind of be creative, so it's stifled in most cases, and what organizations need to do, leaders in particular, is create an environment where people can come into work and feel that they can make mistakes. Because in life, the best way to learn is to make mistakes, is to either try something that doesn't work and be and feel that okay, what will I learn from this process, but not make a mistake and then you're reprimanded for it. So it's being confident as an organization to have an environment where people are actually free to try things out, to be creative, because at the end of the day, nothing you know is formed by just trying once. If we look go back in history, every creation we can see, most people tried quite a few times, failed, and tried again. And always use the example of a baby that starts to walk. How many times will you see a mom tell a child that that gets up to work and falls down? No, don't bother, don't try anymore. That's fine. Don't work, you know, just sit down. You we don't do that. So why would we then do that in the workplace when people try things, fail once, and then that's it, that's the end. In fact, you then start looking at performance management capability because they tried and did and and it failed. It's not right. So it's really creating the environment where people can actually use their brains and always laugh because when you employ people, you're employing them for their brains. But when they come into the workplace, you then expect them to leave the brain at home and come into work because then all you're doing is telling them what you want them to do, you're telling them what you want, and so basically, you're getting them to pack their brain at home, come to work and use your own brain. How can we have creativity in environments like that? So it's really important, and I think this really goes back to leadership in organizations to be able to create environments that people feel confident to try things out and not feel that there would be repercussions for doing it and it doesn't work. One of the other things though is um breakthrough. Because when we're looking at overcoming fear, a lot of times when you think of overcoming fear, the main thing that you really think of is getting some form of breakthrough. It's being able to achieve something that you've probably not been able to achieve before, something that has probably been impossible in the past that is now possible. And to be able to get to a stage of breakthrough, one of the things is having the right strategy. So being able to say, okay, this is the strategy that I need to use to achieve what I want to achieve. Um, so this is the mechanism. For example, if it's to do with finances, I want To have more money. One of the things I always say is it needs to be specific because a lot of people say, I want more money. That doesn't mean anything. How much more do you want to make? In what period of time? And what are you going to do specifically to achieve that? So, what strategy do you have in place to achieve that? So it's being really specific about what you want and what that strategy is. And then the other thing is the story that you're telling yourself, which is the narrative. What are you saying? What's in your brain? What you know what I what beliefs do you have? What values do you have? What experiences have you had in the past that are limiting you? What is it that people have said to you in the past that is holding you back? Basically, just identifying what the limitations are. And then the other thing that I always say is it's your emotional state, and it brings us back to the brain again. You know, that emotional state in which you're able to achieve. Because, for example, if you're in a state that is defeatist, you're not going to be able to do much because that's where the narrative is going to hold you back. A typical example is sometimes you find that you're anxious, but you don't even know why. Or you're worried about something and you've not kind of figured out why quickly. So it's being able to understand your state, and that's the emotion. And I showed you the link between the emotional brain and the prefrontal cortex, very heavily linked with neurons. So it's so important to understand what state you're in mentally and emotionally. Okay, cool. We've got a question.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

So, what is the practical way to achieve that? So, what is like if you if I were to say tomorrow I'm gonna put that into practice, I'm gonna be less fearful. What do I need to do?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Okay, the first thing, like said, is the awareness. It's being aware first and foremost of what your thoughts are. So, and once you identify what the thought, what the thoughts you're having that are negative, it's now been it's now changing them. So changing that narrative, changing the story you're telling yourself. That's the first thing. So it's awareness of your emotions, but also the awareness of your thoughts. So what beliefs are holding you back? And you can detect this quite simply by listening to yourself, so in your day-to-day life, in what you say to people, in how you react to things, so that you can catch yourself while you're doing it. So if you want to do something and you suddenly feel, oh no, I better not, it's then asking yourself the question, why am I hesitant? Why am I procrastinating? Why am I saying I'll do something and not doing it? It's really asking yourself the questions. And I've got five steps that I use when I'm explaining this. The five steps are first of all, recognizing what you're telling yourself. It's recognition first, being able to recognize the emotion or recognize the state. Then the other thing is rephrasing, so it's then changing that narrative so that it goes from negative to a positive, and then releasing the negative limiting thoughts. It's being able to just let them go. Always say, don't fight them. What you don't want to do is suppress it, so it's there, but you're just putting it aside. No, it's like dealing with something. So this is the thought that I'm having, but I'm going to change it because this is the truth, this is what I want to achieve, and I'm going to let this negative one go. And then reinforcing the positive um narrative or positive talk, and then being able to reach it, which is the determination, mainly because it takes about 120 days to change a habit, but to embed that habit, you need another 120 days. So it's something you've got to keep doing constantly. Okay, three things before we finish our first episode. Subscribe to this podcast. So make sure you click on that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss any episode. So I'm also going to be doing bonus episodes. So when I do these episodes, you will get it in your app wherever you subscribe to the podcast. So make sure you do so now. Also, leave a review. This would help me know what topics to address, but also to know what expert gets to bring onto the podcast. I will also be doing a listener shout out each week, and it just might be you. Finally, next week we're going to be looking at how to overcome anxiety and overwhelm. You really won't want to miss this. We've looked at fear this week. Next week, it's that feeling of being anxious, being overwhelmed, feeling stressed. So we're going to dig into that next week and still on the principles of looking at exactly how the brain sees stress, seeks anxiety, or how it creates it, and what you need to do to overcome it. So I look forward to seeing you in our next episode next week. Have a great week.