Som Bathla - Conquer Your Fear of Failure

Conquer Your

Fear of Failure

Escape Your Comfort Zone, Overcome Anxiety, Take Action Despite Being Scared, and Reinvent A Fearless You.

SOM BATHLA

www.sombathla.com

Your Free Gift Bundle

As a token of my thanks for taking the time to read my book, I would like to offer you a gift pack:

Click and Download Your Free Gift Bundle Below

Y OU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAD your gift at http://sombathla.com/freegiftbundle

Thank You!

Part I: Introduction

*******

"O ne who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again." Henry Ford

What If I FALL?Avoid or Embrace

I recalled a scene from my childhood when watching a movie. The movie clip was something like this.

A man was walking on a wall. The height of the wall seemed around five feet, and it was about two feet wide. The man appeared to be comfortable walking on the wall. While walking, he was talking to one of his students just standing belowseemingly; he was explaining something to the student. A few moments later, the teacher asked the student, Can you come up and walk on this wall with me?

The student looked at the wall and said, Not a big deal, sir. I can come and walk.

Then the teacher held the students hand and picked him up. The moment the student stood up on the wall, he was shocked and started trembling.

I was surprised. Why? What would have happened to this young man?

Then, as it happens in the movies, they showed the bigger picture. The wall was, in fact, a huge wall of a big old fort. And this little five feet wall on one side had a deep valley on its other side. It was so deep that there was no possibility for survival if someone ever falls into it. Obviously, the immediate thought the student had was, What if I fall ?

Not just that student, the younger me also got spooked after seeing the glimpse of the depth of the valley even on the screen. Honestly, even today, if I look down from my balconyjust from the tenth floor, I become overwhelmed by the fear of heights.

Above was a frightening movie scene I recollected from the past. Then I instantly thought of the feelings, which arise from another common real-life situation and which is also about falling but gives an entirely different message.

Okay, lets take one daily life example

You and I have seen toddlers when they crawl on the ground. Then, on one fine day, they start trying to stand up on their small feet. They are trying to put the whole load of their entire body on their two feettwo small feet. It is a big move, at least for them, right? The entire body, which was so far being supported by four body parts, will now be solely handled by two small feet. It is a 200% load for legs first of all, and the double whammy is that it is for the first timeno experience of past at all.

Now see what happens next. The child tries to stand up, and she falls. But, it doesnt matter for hershe giggles funnily and again tries. Oh God, she again falls. She tries more, she falls. It is not 1 or 2 or 4 times. It is 30, 40, or maybe 50 times, she falls. Sometimes, she might get tiny bruises here and there and cries loudly, and sometimes she just laughs on her falls. But this falling continues.

What a level of patience she has got. Falling so many times, but handling it with a laugh, giggle, cry and it continues until one fine day, when she gets up on her legsyes, by herself on her own two legs.

And this journey again starts from standing on her own feet until walking on her feet and then running on her feet. With numerous fallings going on and on!

Now, this was another example of What if I fall?

Think about the difference in both the scenarios stated above. It is quite obvious to assess the impact of both the falls. So what is the message here?

The falling in the first case was fatal for sure, and one will surely lose a very precious gift called Life. The falling in the second case was nowhere near fatal at all; rather this falling was necessary for the kid to start learning to stand on her own feet and then walk.

While the first falling was worth avoiding, the second falling was worth seeking. Therefore, every fall cannot be considered as a failure. Rather some falls are necessary for your journey to success. You can comfortably bet that there is no human being on this planet who has started walking on his feet directly without a single fall. Rather this failure by way of falling is instrumental to gradually build the childs strength and rising to her feet. The same analogy applies to few failures on our way to our goals, but the irony is that we are prepared to give up only after one or two failures. Imagine the poor kid giving up her hope of walking after the first two falls; you would be watching an entirely different breed of human beingscrawling on their fours like animals.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." Confucius

Let me be candid here. This book is not about fear of those life-threatening failures and how to address those. Your brain is already well-equipped (with pre-installed mechanism) with an almond-shaped mass of gray material in your brain called the amygdala, to keep you safe from all such life-threatening experience (more on the amygdala later). In fact, this is the amygdala which had protected the human species to survive in those primitive ages when a man was always surrounded by wild animals in the jungle and always subject to dangers.

This book is written primarily to help you look at the fear of failure differently. The key tenet of this book is to enable you to understand your fear of failure and, more particularly, develop a different kind of relationship with failure. You will understand that some fallings or failures are utmost necessary and must be experienced before you can achieve any measurable success.