Robert Kelsey - Whats Stopping You: Why Smart People Dont Always Reach Their Potential and How You Can

Table of Contents

This book will help you navigate the barriers youve built.

The Sun

An engaging and entertaining read. Worth a look.

BA Business Life

I couldnt help but admire the bravely personal experiences and stories shared by the author.

Management Today

A readable but intelligent book.

The Market

I would recommend the book to anyone from apprentices to entrepreneurs who would like a practical perspective of psychology and self-help.

Edge Magazine

This personal witty and insightful book teaches us about the fears that drive failure and the self-awareness that can help to navigate it. The great point about this book is that it is both philosophical with regards the nature of fear and its impact on achievement, and practical. For those that may be paralyzed by a fear of failure, it offers a way through.

Luke Johnson, Chairman, Risk Capital Partners and The RSA, FT columnist, and serial entrepreneur

Robert Kelsey has combined thorough research, careful thought and the lessons of his own experience to produce a valuable, original and eminently readable book. I can strongly recommend it to anyone whose progress has been impeded by fear of failure.

John Caunt, author of Boost Your Self-esteem

This is a must-read book for anyone concerned with achieving long-term professional success. Not only does Kelsey explain our common insecurities in the most readable and entertaining ways, he delivers strategies and tactics that really work.

Martin Yate CPC, NY Times bestseller of Knock em Dead: Secrets and Strategies for Success in an Uncertain World

Why do talented people sabotage their own chances of success? Often the answer is that they are afraid of failure. Kelsey provides a practical guide for overcoming this common problem. Clear, engaging, and to the point.

Dylan Evans, author of Emotion: The Science of Sentiment

This powerful, insightful book shows you how to unlock your unconscious brakes and step on the accelerator to achieve your true potential!

Brian Tracy, author of Goals! , Eat That Frog , and Maximum Achievement

In this wise and compelling book, Robert Kelsey helps you think your way out of fear of failure not only by appreciating its hidden virtues but by discovering the most original and enlightening routes to self-confidence. Whats Stopping You? is a brilliant guide to the art of living in the twenty-first century, written with literary flair and personal insight.

Roman Krznaric, author of The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live and co-founder of The School of Life

Kelsey offers a successful and eloquent analysis of fear of failure as a mass condition in the modern world, and one we ignore at our peril.

Donald Kirkpatrick, psychoanalyst and a founder of the London Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

Confidence is the ultimate secret weapon of any successful entrepreneur. If Roberts book can help you find yours then it will be worth its weight in gold.

Rachel Bridge, Sunday Times Enterprise Editor and author of How I Made it , My Big Idea and How to Make a Million Before Lunch

Its a bestseller for a reason buy it!

Hag Hughes, author of Mr Right: The Smart Girls Guide to Finding Him

This updated second edition first published 2012

2012 Whats Stopping You Ltd

Whats Stopping You? is a trademark of Whats Stopping You Ltd

First edition published 2011

Registered office

Capstone Publishing Ltd (A Wiley Company), John Wiley and Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

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While the case studies outlined in the pages ahead are based on concerns and experiences outlined to the author either directly or indirectly all names and locations have been changed in order to protect identities. Also, in all the case studies sufficient details and circumstances have been altered for any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, to be purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelsey, Robert, 1964-

Whats stopping you? : why smart people dont always reach their potential, and how you can / Robert Kelsey. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-85708-307-4 (pbk.)

1. Success in business. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) 3. Self-help techniques. I. Title.

HF5386.K275 2012

650.1dc23

2012016640

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-857-08307-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-857-08336-4 (ebk)

ISBN 978-0-857-08337-1 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-857-08338-8 (ebk)

To Lucy

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I had high hopes for Whats Stopping You? when it was first published in April 2011. But I also nursed many doubts. As a High-FF (all explained within), this was perhaps inevitable. Fear of failure makes our doubts cast long shadows over our hopes and, before long, we are sabotaging ourselves with our negative self-beliefs.

For those with a high fear of failure this is a well known cycle. And one that, usually, results in arrested endeavour potentially followed by frustration, depression, anger and resignation. Well not this time. Encouraged by my agent (Isabel Atherton at Creative Authors), my publisher (Holly Bennion at Wiley) and my wife (Lucy), I took the plunge. I wrote about the fears and doubts and insecurities that have plagued me since childhood, and about the research Ive undertaken over many years to try and fathom out my condition.

Whats Stopping You? is the result and, so far, its reception has bowled me over. Originally published in April 2011, the book reached Number One in a major retail business book chart around May and stayed there until January 2012. It also won positive reviews, professional praise and, literally, hundreds of emails from readers that felt the book spoke to them personally and was helping them understand their condition and plot a more productive path.

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