Maybe you suffer from the Empire State Building syndrome. This comes from the joke. A man jumps off the top of the Empire State building, and as he passes a window on the way down he is heard to say, ‘So far, so good…’
But THEN?
Perhaps you put on a smiley face for any new venture, while all the while you secretly dread that it will end in big time failure — because it has before, perhaps often, for you.
After a few times like that, possibly you don’t try any more. What’s the point?
You can change this.
Yes, there is a way out for you. You could use the new energy self-help therapy called EFT tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to vastly reduce your fear of failure.
What is EFT tapping?
EFT is a meridian-based stress relief technique that can eliminate unnecessary emotions — such as oversize fear.
First you would learn this easy technique, which requires you simply to tap on key acupressure release points on your face and body while you say a few specific words about your difficulty. You might repeat this short routine a few times, until you find that, spontaneously, you feel different, better.
No willpower needed. You are simply tapping away stress, in this case, the stress of excessive fear. Your words while tapping would be something like, ‘Even though I’m afraid I’ll fail again, I accept myself anyway.’
Change on two levels
Your approach to your fear of failure using EFT tapping would be on two levels: whether you learn this system for yourself, or whether you get coaching help from an EFT specialist (in person, or by phone or Skype/Zoom.).
You would:
1) Tap down the immediate fear level and its accompanying body symptoms (what happens in your body when you feel fear?)
2) Neutralise your emotions about past events where you judged yourself to have failed, or where someone else told you you had failed.
However many of those events you may have racked up, as you find fear fading away, you will naturally become more confident.
You might even start acknowledging all those times when you have been successful, so that you can build on those feelings.
Thomas Edison – failure expert?
Actually, the inventor Thomas Edison nailed it when he said, ‘Failure is successfully finding out what doesn’t work.’ He was an expert in this area. He filed 1093 patents, but he mainly hit the big time for only several electrical wonders, including the light globe and the phonograph.
You yourself will have proved Edison’s statement years ago. When you started to learn to walk, you would go: step, step, splat. You’d be picked up, then go: step, step, step, splat. Up again: step, step, step, step, splat. And guess what? You can walk.
Not words alone
Unfortunately, words alone won’t change a conviction that when you take a risk there is bound to be an Empire State Building splat. But — when you learn how to dissolve your unnecessary fears with EFT tapping, even if you have always failed, you will change your life.
I don’t promise that you’ll never experience fear of failure again. You may, whenever you face some new experience, because that is how humans work. But whenever that fear comes up, you’ll have a reliable tool to promote your new success. Try it!