PP8: Fear of failure
Here’s the eighth sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness”
Fear of failure
Many people believe that an opportunity for failure lurks around every corner like a swarthy stranger in a trench coat. They are probably right. That’s why it would be folly to proceed into the treacherous neighborhood of opportunities without sufficiently equipping ourselves with the right weapons.
A small sampling of swarthy strangers in trench coats:
• Becoming a parent • Learning to ski
• Losing weight for health reasons • Closing the deal
• Pursuing a lifelong dream • Painting the bathroom
• Running for office • Going to college
• Accepting a promotion • Quitting cigarettes
with added responsibilities
Fear of failure is common. But letting it deter us from taking advantage of an opportunity may very well be a source of anxiety and stress greater than any resulting from taking on the challenge. An ironic truth is that some of us engage in self-defeating behaviors: We won’t even make an attempt to lose weight, for example, because of a fear of the failure brought about by success. We believe people will reset their expectations of us — that after we meet our goal we will immediately have a love life and have stylish new clothes and be, um, more attractive — and we know we might not be able to rise to these expectations. The same can be true for those who study and study but never quite get over the final hurdle for a degree or license or certification. And we’ve all probably heard news reports of recently released prisoners who purposely commit a crime so they can return to the only place they know where expectations are very low. We all probably sabotage ourselves at one time or another, including by knowingly setting our goals too high.
We don’t always have control over the indicators for “failure”; for example, if our cumulative grade point average is too low to meet the entrance requirements for college X, it is not a personal failure or a flaw and it doesn’t mean we’re losers. All it means is we did not meet that institution’s criteria, which are in place for specific reasons maybe known only to the college. The same grade point average may still gain acceptance at college Y or college Z. Similarly, if you’re not tall enough to be allowed to ride the Wicked Whirling Tornado at the county fair, it’s not a personal failure. (Of course, your fear of failure here may mean that your Sweetie Dumpling will get on the ride with Slim instead of you, but who needs that kind of fickle female anyway! You’ve discovered the upside: Because you’re short you can discover her true colors.) If you still want to ride, try again next year.
Unfortunately, we can fear failure because we have an unjustifiable lack of confidence in our abilities (for example, refusing to enroll in a photography class because you just KNOW you won’t be any good); or because we choose to undertake an endeavor we believe to be against our best interests in an attempt to meet someone else’s expectations (for example, going to law school for a parent who enjoyed great success in the profession, even though your real love is the performing arts).
I’m not suggesting we dismiss the idea of failure altogether. It’s always a possibility. But if we are tenacious and committed to a goal and have self-confidence and a justifiable belief in our strengths and skills, the chances of failure are greatly diminished. And, most important, failure is a failure only if we judge it to be — not others.
You may download now the whole the first chapter (“Slavery”) of my e-book “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” FREE: http://stressfreedomguide.com/free/1/freechapter.html
PP7: Fear of loneliness
Here’s the seventh sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (PP7)
Fear of loneliness
As you will see in the Needs section, human beings have a need for affection and intimacy. Very few people would choose to be without it. (I know, I know, sometimes you dream about the pleasures of being completely alone, but you wouldn’t continue to enjoy it long-term, especially if the alone-ness was forced on you rather than being a choice you made. What do I mean by “forced” on you? I mean a beloved spouse dies and your family members, if you have any, live far away. Or you find your middle-aged self divorced and alone.) The craving for physical touch and intimacy can be excruciating. Loneliness is painful and therefore thwarts our attempts to reach stress-FREEDOM.
Poor choices are common among those who don’t believe they could handle the pain of loneliness. A few examples:
* A decision to stay in an abusive relationship
* A decision to marry a person while ignoring the nagging doubts about the success of a permanent relationship.
* A variation on that decision: A decision to marry because of pregnancy while ignoring the small warning voices in your head.
* A decision to sabotage a promising career (for example, refuse a job transfer) because of a girlfriend or boyfriend or because of the fear of not knowing anyone in the new location.
By making these kinds of decisions, a person is declaring that he or she is unable to endure the pain of loneliness. A better decision is to believe one is capable of overcoming the possibility of loneliness by changing one’s perceptions and helping one view his or herself as lovable and capable. I am sincerely hopeful that your excursion through From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness proves useful in giving you tips and tools to change any negative attitudes you may have that prevent you from living a stress-free existence.
You may download now the whole the first chapter (“Slavery”) of my e-book “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” FREE: http://stressfreedomguide.com/free/1/freechapter.html
effects and side effects
The incision scars were healing nicely as the bandages provoked an itching rash at their edges. Scratching them resulted in infections and antibiotics were prescribed. The antibiotics provoked an allergic response of itching rash on almost the entire surface of my skin, so anti-itch cream and pills were ordered to combat the itching pain. The only side effect of these last pills is a general somnolence and I gladly indulge in taking extended naps night and day, increasing the number the hours of painlessness.
This chain reaction reminded me of the side effects of the Epicurean conduct of life: health, contentment, happiness and self-sufficiency. And, to quote Epicurus: “Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency”.
first sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance
Here’s the first sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness”
SLAVERY (1)
You’ve probably never thought of yourself as a slave (unless you count cleaning toilets and ironing shirts). But you’re about to see how we’re all slaves — slaves to fear. I don’t mean fear of slimy swamp creatures and monsters in the closet, even of losing our jobs or becoming very ill. I’m talking about the same kind of fear Roosevelt referred to more than 75 years ago.
The fear we are slaves to is of something shapeless and cloudy inside our heads. The good news is we can break the chains of emotional slavery and find stress-FREEDOM if we:
* Understand how we got shackled in the first place
* Recognize that we’re the only ones who can set us free
* Have the tools to unlock the chains
* Commit ourselves to the task
We’ll define slavery in this particular context as:
A state of being deprived of freedom
Until we can break free from the chains of fear, we will continue to deprive ourselves of a pain- and anxiety-free existence. In other words, the life of happiness we all seek — a state of stress-FREEDOM.
WHAT WE’RE AFRAID OF
There are many slave drivers that have taken up residence in our heads, including fear of:
Pain
Loneliness
Disrespect
Failure
Poverty
Death
At first glance, you may scoff and say, “No, not me!” But if we examine the concepts further, you may adjust your thinking. This is a long list of questions, but it must be in order for us to fully explore our self-defeating behaviors.
Please answer with a “yes” or a “no”:
1. Do you regularly drink more than you intended to?
2. Do you dislike, and even try to avoid, criticism?
3. Do you worry about what others may be saying about you?
4. Do you believe some events are just a matter fate?
5. Are you comfortable taking risks?
6. Does someone in your life “have it in for you”? That is, does someone just not like you and want to cause you trouble and grief at every opportunity?
7. Do you sometimes berate yourself for spending too much on your wardrobe?
8. Do you change your hair color fairly often?
9. Do you want to have washboard abs?
10. Do you sometimes think of yourself as a loser?
11. Do you carry over credit card debt from month to month?
12. Do you envy others who are thin and trim?
13. Are you planning the-wedding-of-all-weddings?
14. Are you staying in an abusive relationship?
15. Do you pick up “dates” in bars?
16. Do you use hair growth formulas because you’re balding?
17. Do you whiten your teeth?
18. Do you occasionally get embarrassed by your spouse’s behavior at a party?
19. Are you afraid to be seen without makeup?
20. When another person dominates the conversation, name-drops, and brags about his accomplishments, do you respond in kind?
21. Do you ignore physical symptoms and avoid going to the doctor?
22. Are you reluctant to simplify your lifestyle in times of financial trouble?
23. Do you sometimes feel that you just don’t measure up, that you are not handsome or sexy or rich or smart enough?
24. Do you ever exaggerate your accomplishments or take sole credit for something you were only a part of?
25. Have you ever gone to a movie or out to a nice restaurant alone?
26. Do you tend to be offended by criticism?
27. Do you routinely cave in to pressure and then later want to kick yourself (e.g., drink more than you know you should just to be sociable at parties; agree to chair a committee when you know you don’t have the time to do a good job)?
28. Do you say “It’s just not fair” frequently?
29. Do you sabotage yourself, e.g., violate the terms of a weight-loss plan or drop out of a class you really wanted to take, for a flimsy reason?
30. Do you need to be right and to prevail in every disagreement?
31. Do you consistently blame other factors when things go badly for you?
32. Do you usually ignore the “small voice in your head” (your conscience) when it is saying something contrary to what you have made up your mind to do?
A “yes” answer to any of these questions does not automatically make you a slave, but you should ask yourself why you answered the question the way you did. Was it because you studied the benefits and consequences and then made a free and conscious choice after you determined it will help you along in your quest for happiness? Or was it because:
* You want your in-laws to know you are prosperous.
* You have an image of stylishness and attractiveness to maintain.
* You want people to think you are smart.
* You don’t want people to know how smart you are.
* You don’t want people to think you made a poor decision.
* You don’t want to die.
* You don’t want to be lonely.
* You want to meet others’ expectations.
* You believe the ads in magazines and on TV that attempt to persuade you of the importance of owning the latest electronic gadgets, driving a luxury car, transforming yourself into a silky blonde, drinking manly beer, being buff, thin, beautiful, well-dressed and fragrant.
* You must “keep up appearances.”
* You need to prove you’re “hip” or macho.
* The thought of meeting expectations — yours or another’s — is frightening enough to make you want to fail.
If you can see yourself in any of these statements, you are a slave to at least one fear, and probably more. This means you continually live in a state of stress, and when you are in a state of stress, you cannot find happiness. Only stress-FREEDOM can lead you to happiness. I’ll describe each of these fears in more detail so that becomes clearer.
<end of sequel 1 – to be continued>
stress-FREEDOM, pain, pleasure, happiness, Epicurus, Epicurean
Find a Proven Orientation System for Living the Good Life Stress-Free
Where do we get the orientation we all need to guide us from pain to pleasure, from stress to happiness, from confusion to clarity? Who gives us what kind of orientation today in which form with what intent?
We learn very early which way to turn our face to get milk from mother’s breast or avoid a slap from mother’s hand, where to go for food, comfort, company and when to stop touching a hot stove. Our senses and our physical environment teach us what is good and healthy for us by producing a feeling of pleasure. What is bad for our health produces disgust. Pleasure and pain are the basic stop-and-go signals for our individual survival.
This would be enough if we weren’t so very social. But humans cannot survive on their own and therefore the social group will also teach us what is good and bad for the survival of the group. The group’s teachings might differ from what we learned through our direct sense feedback. Your senses tell you to devour all the food but if you don’t share it with (some of) your group members they might punish you and not share with you their food the next time.
So you learn to work out your survival strategies balancing your individual needs as felt by your drives and tastes with the group values as experienced through daily practice, learning conflict and expectation management. This is hard enough and it takes years to find your place in the group in such a way that you can still live also according to your personal drives and tastes.
Your job to find orientation will get even more difficult or even impossible if your social environment keeps on sending you ambiguous messages by, e.g., commanding you not to lie but at the same time everybody lying to you about a life after death.
As a consequence you will be disoriented and will try to work out strategies to get along within this system. You can choose to conform to the system and pretend to follow its rules, being incongruent with your own inner beliefs. Or you can choose “to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing” become incongruent with the value system and acceptable behavior patterns of your social environment. In both cases you will ruin your mental and possibly also your physical health. You will perceive the most widespread incongruities mostly as conscience conflicts and stress.
What can you do if you don’t wish stress to ruin your health and happiness? What other options can you have?
You could find a value system linked to behavior patterns and corresponding lifestyles in a congruent manner. In other words you might seek and find people who walk their talk and their thoughts, words and acts are congruent not only among themselves but they resonate with your own deepest needs as well.
I have good news for you: There is such a proven and viable model of pragmatic and easy to follow values system. It is the 2300-years-old practical Epicurean philosophy. It makes it easy to be honest and happy at the same time. It has been hushed up and defamed by the competing philosophies and worldviews of the Platonist, Stoic, Skeptic as well as Christian theoreticians and theologians but it never stopped giving simple practical orientation to reasonable, rational and honest people. For an enormously long period of 800 years, from 300 BCE till 500 CE (almost four times longer than the whole history of the US!), it was even the most widespread worldview and lifestyle of the non-fanatical, pragmatic middle class of the Greek and Roman world.
Professional philosophers mostly know how relevant Epicurean attitudes, worldview and life conduct are today and how many of our stress-related and ecological problems would be solved if we only adopted and applied them. Unfortunately they don’t know how to say all this in simple language that is understandable also for everybody. The overwhelming majority of psychologists and sociologists, educators and life coaches has either never heard about Epicureanism or if they did, they erroneously believe that it is about eating and drinking. On the other hand they are churning out ever “new” happiness recipes, as if re-inventing the wheel every week.
Epicurean happiness guidance is available for everyone who needs orientation but cannot accept childish myths or spiritual hocus-pocus supplied by organizations, groups or individuals with the aim of turning you into a docile instrument for their profit/power increasing machinery. Re-discovering the Epicurean system of values, attitudes and behaviour patterns will make you feel reborn in a friendly and sustainable world, enabling you to live in harmony with yourself and with your social and natural environment.
Satisfy Your Need for Subsistence by Following an Ancient Pathway Towards Stress-freedom
Did you know that unsatisfied needs cause stress and pain? Have you heard about a 2,300-year-old tried and true method for choosing happiness-boosting satisfiers instead of happiness-busters?
I define need as a condition requiring relief; anything that is necessary but lacking. To avoid stress and pain people must satisfy their needs. Fundamental needs are universal, that is, the same in all cultures throughout the ages. We all have the same fundamental needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, freedom and transcendence.
Need-satisfiers may vary among cultures and times, but one aspect is universal: The way in which we satisfy our needs can boost or bust our happiness. Oxygen, nutrition, shelter, clothing and sleep are satisfiers of the fundamental need for subsistence. What kind of nutrition, shelter or clothing we use to satisfy our need for subsistence varies largely from culture to culture and from individual to individual.
We all need the six major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins and water. What we eat, however, is largely determined by the perceived palatability of foods. A simple diet of water and bread, fruits and vegetables is easy and cheap to obtain. Stress results when we adopt ideas (prompted by our family, friends, authorities or the all-pervasive advertising industry) that only a certain kind of sweetened and carbonated beverage can quench our thirst or only expensive and sophisticated dishes satiate our hunger.
Working long hours and getting stressed by peers, supervisors and customers can be the result of a false belief in having to pay the mortgages for a house which is far bigger than needed for sheltering us from the frost or heat. And billions of dollars are made by another industry entirely based on our inappropriate estimation of our needs and our false belief that we may obtain happiness through status: the fashion industry.
Hundreds of scientific studies furnish thousands of proofs for the rightness of an ancient philosophical school whose members dedicated their lives to the pursuit of happiness: the happiness-school communities of the Epicureans that flourished for 800 years between 300 BC and 500 AD in the Greek-Roman world. Their recipe was simple: The good life is a simple life lead in the safe circle of like-minded friends, satisfying our natural needs in a simple and appropriate manner. Their pathway to happiness was to follow simple pleasures that cause no harm to themselves or others, carefully avoiding activities or even thoughts that might lead to pain or disturbance.
What they did to reach the state of simple happiness is something we all can do:
- ask whether our fundamental need for subsistence is met by the appropriate satisfiers, i.e., whether we are overfed, overclad or overhoused
- readjust the satisfiers to the need: Eat and drink simple food and beverages, wear simple clothes and live in houses that are not bigger and costlier than necessary.
The result will be an immediate and substantial decline of our stress level and at the same time an upsurge in our sense of control, stress-freedom and self-respect. In other words, an instant increase of our happiness.
Today scientific research endorses the tenets and the lifestyle of the ancient Epicurean happiness experts, and they can be safely copied for making individuals truly happy and saving our natural resources at the same time.
You can make a first step today on this ancient and proven pathway from pain to pleasure by aligning your need for subsistence with tried and true happiness-boosting satisfiers, like opting for appropriate housing, clothing and food. If you need support or additional resources for the next steps, just browse the Internet for the happiness-boosting Epicurean pathway from pain to pleasure, from stress to stress-freedom.
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