Pop quiz: What two things do these statements have in common?

1.       If I can get enough time free for an intense work out today, then I'll hit the gym.

2.       I'm not asking out that hottie in my chemistry class unless she shows interest in me first.

3.       Once I've taken golf lessons and am good at it, then I'll play with my colleagues.

4.       I'll lead that group study only if I can find the time to plan all 12 lessons out in advance.

5.       I'll quit my job and be a photographer as soon as I know that I've achieved financial security.

You got it! If we pop the hood of these things that run through our minds some of the time or even a lot of the time, we find 1) a fear of failure and 2) an all or nothing approach to trying new or difficult things. The mantra of this kind of thinking is: "I won't do it unless I'm sure I can do it well."

What's Wrong with Only Doing Things Well?

Now you're probably thinking that I'm going to tell you that the fear of failure and all or nothing thinking are bad and we shouldn't do them, right? But let's be honest here. As with just about every way that we choose to approach life, there are good and bad things about this kind of thinking. Making sure that we can do things well before we start means we're less likely to look stupid or be caught unprepared. People can't laugh at us or think badly of us if we just do what we know we're good at. And by people, I mean ourselves, too! We give our inner critics less to mock us for if we only do what we can do well. That's no small thing.

The down side, of course, is that we try fewer things. Refusing to be novices, we're not as likely to discover things we'd really enjoy or would eventually be really good at if we'd only press through the beginning failures and stick with them long enough. We're not likely to learn that we can survive and even learn from failure, or that we don't have to fear failure it as much as we do now, because we haven't had enough experience with it to learn that. Also, we're not as likely to change those hurtful habits we've picked up along the way, because at least now, when we've not really put our whole effort into changing, we can say we didn't fail because we never really tried. So we don't really try and we also don't really change.

The saddest thing about the "I won't do it unless I'm sure I can do it well" approach is that as we develop a habit of pulling back from risk and opportunity because of our fear of not doing things well, we may wake up to find ourselves living boring, wasted, hurtful lives. We buy short term "safe" success at the cost of long term failure to really live.

So Do it Poorly

This is where my favorite quote comes in. G.K. Chesterton once said, "Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly." I know, that sounds awful, doesn't it? Like I must have quoted it wrong? But what he's getting at is that if something is worth doing, and we don't have the time, skill, confidence, or energy we need to do it really well, we might as well go ahead and do it poorly, since it's still worth doing.

It's the worth doing that is key here. Of course I'm not recommending that we all go out and try to fail or do a half-hearted job at everything we do. If you're already great at something, by all means do it well! This approach is strictly for those things that we're not great at, but are worth doing despite the possibility of shoddy success or even failure.

So what would that be like? Returning to our previous examples, it might sound like:

1.       I've only got 45 minutes left to work out today, but that's still better than nothing. I'll do what I can now and get a better work out in tomorrow.

2.       I don't think I'll ever be sure whether that chemistry class hottie will say yes to me. If I don't ask her out, though, I'll always wonder what would have happened if I had. I might as well do it. If she turns me down, that will suck, but I'll probably live.

3.       I want to play golf with my colleagues and I know I'm not going to have time to do lessons before. I'll just go with them, tell them I'm a newbie, and we can laugh at my game together.

4.       There will be some weeks that I won't be able to prepare for the group study until the day before. I guess I'll just ask the group to bring in some of their own questions and ideas on weeks that I know I can't be on my A-game.

5.       I've always wanted to see if I could make money at photography. Even though I don't feel ready to quit my job right now, maybe I can cut down my hours and start using that time to learn about selling my photos.

You'll notice that all the statements now have two new things in common. Each thinker knows the value of the opportunity-staying in shape, the possibility of romance, recreation with colleagues, learning leadership, transitioning to a fulfilling career-and lets that value override the fear of failure. Each thinker is also willing to tolerate half-way effort-doing it "poorly"-at least long enough to try it out. Even if these folks come to the end of their lives without ever being great at these things, they will still have the consolation of saying, "I tried things that were important to me. I did what I could. I may not be great, but I'm not a coward."

When we redefine failure as "not trying important things" rather than "not succeeding at important things," we can set ourselves free to live adventurously. Of course our inner critics and those who are not secure enough to be really "for us" will tell us that we aren't doing things well. But as we keep reminding ourselves "At least I'm doing them!" we can gradually develop calluses to protect us from those voices that would chain us to a safe, boring, strictly "successful" life.

If that weren't reason enough to give this approach a try, another exciting byproduct of doing things that we can't do well all by ourselves is that it generates opportunities for other people or God to come through for us and fill in the gaps we couldn't cover. The only way we can really know that we are not fundamentally alone-that at the end of the day others really will be there for us-is by being willing to encounter things that we will not succeed at unless others come through for us. When we do this and others come through, that's when we finally know we can trust them. And it's that kind of trust, that heart knowing that others have "got our back," that gives us the courage to try more and more worthwhile things, leading to a full, adventurous life.

Six Steps Toward Redefining Failure

To begin moving from a safe, constraining, "I won't do it unless I'm sure I can do it well" approach to life to the "I'm doing it poorly, but at least I'm doing it" approach:

1.       Take some time to yourself to review journals or thoughts that remind you of life dreams you once entertained or activities you once wanted to try.

2.       For each one, ask yourself if that dream or activity is still worth doing. If you got to the end of your life and never did it, would you be disappointed?

3.       For those things that you'd be disappointed if you didn't do, ask yourself what's the worst that could happen if you tried them and didn't do them well or even spectacularly failed at them? Could you and your loved ones live through that? What good might come to you from the process of trying and failing, even if you didn't eventually succeed?

4.       Now ask yourself what it would look like to do at least some of each dream or activity, even if you couldn't do it to the extent you'd like or with the full skill, time, energy, or competency you'd like.

5.       What steps could you take today toward doing a bit of each dream or activity that is still worth doing, whether you succeed or not?

6.       See if you can try a few small, half-steps toward your most important dreams and activities, sticking with those small steps through the first several failures-long enough to know you've faced your fear and given them a fair try.

Whether you excel at your dreams, or simply overcome your fear of failure through repeated exposure to it, I wish you all the best in your courageous pursuit of living life to the full!

If you or someone you know would like some help working through fears about failure, call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com. 

What have you been trying to change for just about ever? Nail biting? Binge drinking? Gossiping? Skin picking? Downing a liter of Dr. Pepper a day? Staying up too late? Whatever those habits are, minor annoyances or debilitating addictions, there are reasons we haven't been able to change them. 

Using the following six questions to take a closer look at what keeps us from change can help in at least two ways. We might finally discover what's been in the way of our change so we can do something effective about it. Or, exploring what all would be involved in the change can help us to decide whether it's really worth the effort. If not, we can stop nagging ourselves about it and get on to other things. Either way, it's better than being stuck wanting change and not being able to get there.

 1. What's wrong with my habit? 

I'm the first to admit it. Change is difficult and uncomfortable even when it's positive and good! So if we're going to touch it even with a 10 ft. pole, there's got to be some pretty darned good reasons to do so. Often, people don't change because they've considered the reasons for change and not found them all that compelling. The change might make life a bit better, but not enough to make it worth the pain of changing! 

Other times, there are lots of compelling reasons to change, but we just haven't taken the time to notice them all and add up what they would mean for us. In this case, the trick might be to make a list of the effects that our unwanted habit has on our lives and the lives of those we care about, both currently and in the future. We might need to ask those who are important to us how our habit affects them. Only then will we have enough information about the effects of the change to decide whether it's worth all the bother. 

2. What do I really care about? 

Now, say we have a list of the negative effects of our habit on ourselves and others a mile long.  But none of the effects really tap into something we care about. In that case, the change might just not be worth it for us. Sure, the experts say that marijuana causes lung cancer, paranoia, decrease in brain function, birth defects, yada, yada, yada. But if what we care most about right now is getting a small break from painful circumstances by feeling something different, let's face it, none of the medical reasons to quit smoking pot are going to feel that compelling. 

So if we're feeling like we really do want to change, but just can't get the uumph to do it, we might need to find a way to tie the reasons to change to something we really care about. For example, I recently changed my bad habit of not drinking enough water. For years I'd been told about the benefits of drinking water and I simply ignored all the expert advice. But when I started feeling tired a lot of the time, that cut into my ability to be productive and present with people who are important to me-two things I care about very much. Suddenly, I was motivated to drink water because it tapped into things that mattered to me. So the key here is to find ways to link the change to something that really matters to us right now, or to something in the future that we can still care about right now. 

3. How do I stay motivated? 

So we've inventoried the effects of our habit on us and others and we've tied them to things that really matter to us. Right now, we feel really motivated to change. It feels worth the effort. But those of us who have failed to change in the past have probably noticed that this feeling of being motivated that sets us on the road to change can be pretty short lived. Meanwhile, changing habits is a long process! Yes, I've known some people who somehow find sustained internal motivation to make huge, long-term changes on their own. But most of us need some help! We need 1) other people who care about us to 2) know about the change we are trying to make and then 3) hold some of our motivation for us. Then, when our personal well of motivation runs dry, they can encourage us and remind us about why we want to change, handing some of our motivation back to us when we run out. 

So who could we tell about the change we are making? Friends? Family? A counselor? A support or AA group? A spiritual director? What specific things could we ask them to do to support our change process? Regular encouraging check-ins? Being there for us to call when we are about to return to our habit? Doing activities with us that help us avoid our unwanted habits? The more supporters we've got and the more specifically we can ask for help with our change, the better our chances of sustaining the motivation we need to stick with it. 

4. How does my habit work? 

Once we've got motivation and support, we need to develop a really clear understanding of how our unwanted habit works. Behavior researchers talk about the fact that we don't continue to do a behavior unless there is some reward to it, no matter how weird or subtle the reward might be. So to stop a habit, we need to figure out how it has been rewarding us so that we can find other ways to get an equivalent reward. 

We might start by looking at the last 3-5 times we engaged in our habit. What was the situation? What were we feeling when we decided to do the habit? How did we feel while we were doing it? How about after it was over? What were the pleasant, rewarding things we experienced along the way? What locations, situations, feelings, or people remind us of our habit and make us want to experience the rewards that it brings? Talking with supporters can be a great way to increase understanding of how our habits work. They may be able to see things we don't because we are so used to our habits that it is hard to see them clearly. 

5. What can I do instead? 

After researching our habit, learning what it does for us, and identifying the situations that set us up to repeat it, we're now equipped to find alternative ways of receiving the rewards that we used to get from our habits. If smoking used to give us a break when we were about to engage in a difficult work task, maybe now we can let ourselves take non-smoking breaks whenever we have a craving. If gossiping makes us feel important because we always have something to share, maybe we can still share good news about others while also subscribing to current events resources that give us interesting, but less damaging things to share. If cutting lets us feel sufficiently punished to buy us a little relief from the fear that someone else will punish us in ways we can't control, maybe snapping our wrists with a rubber band, holding an ice cube, or running up a steep hill could do the same kind of thing without the scars and guilt. 

In addition to alternative rewards, we'll also need ways to avoid those situations that make it almost impossible not to return to our habit. Skin pickers might use the night light in the bathroom rather than the overhead light so it's harder to see the blemishes they'd be tempted to scratch or squeeze. Cola addicts might avoid the carbonated drink aisle at the store or only shop after drinking 32oz of something healthy, but flavorful. The more ways we have of re-routing ourselves from situations that would return us to our habit, the better chance we'll have of forming new habits that solidify our changes. Then, we can keep using our support systems to help us keep going with these alternatives until they become second nature to us and the old habit is mostly a thing of the past. 

6. How do I recover from failure? 

Now even those of us who've done it all-we're super motivated, have great support, have a clear understanding of how our habits work, and have a long and vetted list of alternative rewards and habits-can still sometimes fall into old habits. We run into our drug dealer at the DMV, of all places, on a day when we haven't slept, we've lost our job, and just discovered that the basement's flooded. We're feeling like a failure already and suddenly we find ourselves wanting to fail if only to prove how valid our "I'm a failure" feeling is. That day, after months or years of success, the drugs get the better of us. 

The key here is to remind ourselves even before a failure happens that failure is a key part of the change process, specifically, the quality assurance part. Failure provides us valuable information about the weak spots in our change plan that we can use to create new areas of strength. From the drug example above, we could learn that we need an alternative habit for times when we want to feel destructive, but don't actually want to destroy everything that's important to us: maybe playing a video game we are horrible at, buying some cheap plates to smash, or eating food that tastes awful. Failure simply says, "Here's an area in need of a new alternative or a stronger reward." 

The important thing is to see failure as part of the change process, not the end of it. If we believe that it's the end, we are likely to make it so, throwing all our progress out the window and abandoning ourselves and our loved ones to our nasty habit. When we see failure as information that informs the overall change process, then it's not so difficult to return to the change questions, reminding ourselves of the negative effects of our habit and what we really care about so that we can jump start ourselves back onto the road to change. Staying engaged with the change, not arriving at "perfection," is the key to long term transformation. 

If you've been trying to change for awhile and are having a hard time, chances are that you need to explore one or more of these six questions a bit more fully. Please know that you are not alone in this. Wrestling with these aspects of change is a big part of being human! If you or someone you know would like some help navigating through these change questions, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com. 

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com.