Hating judo – and other fear of failure giveaways

My six year old son achieved something last week that eluded me as a child. He was awarded a red-belt at judo. This meant a presentation in front of the class and a round of applause. He was delighted.

So how come he could manage this rather modest achievement, while I couldn’t? Because I had fear of failure. My mother enrolled me on a judo class because she thought I needed toughening up. It always seemed a bit scary to me – a bit rough – but I played along hoping it may awaken a hitherto untapped talent for mindless violence. In fact I was hoping to develop the sort of attack mentality I was suffering from on the walk to school – though from much older boys – hence this rather 1970s response (I suspect dad had a hand in it somewhere).

Yet this felt like just another dose of the same – except in a sports hall (so officially sanctioned) and with people in white dressing gowns. And the teacher had bad breath and a dismissive “useless boy” way about him. Meanwhile, my son thinks fighting great fun and loves the idea of rolling around on mats and trying to wrestle each other to the ground. The whole thing suits his constant battle fantasies and gives his little brother some respite. And his teacher is a female national champion likely to be in the Great Britain Olympic team. She’s not to be messed with but still oozes warmth and love for her charges, unlike my episode which seemed to bear more of a resemblance to Lord of the Flies.

So there are key differences in teaching and atmosphere that led my six-year old the right way and me down another activity cul-de-sac (football and the Cubs were two others I joined and, immediately sought to avoid). But the key difference was that he approached judo assuming he’d be good at it and saw the setbacks as just temporary: a technique to be learnt (usually a violent one). While I approached judo fearfully – expecting to fail. Pretty soon I was complaining to my mother that I was too tired, or more interested in football, or that Blue Peter had an item our teacher wanted us to watch.

Looking back, my fear of failure was pretty evident. So what are the classic signs that we are High-FFs (as I call those with a high fear of failure in What’s Stopping You?) – both as a child and an adult? Here are a few – some from personal experience, some from the wide body of psychological research on the subject (and all with the caveat that any one of these traits is not evidence in itself of fear of failure – there could be other explanations).

1) Difficulty settling into mainstream activities. As above, this was certainly a major one for me. I just couldn’t settle in any club or formalised non-curricular activity. Partly this was due to an innate rebelliousness (see below) but a core problem was that I secretly feared failure and, therefore, sought to avoid the activity. Occasionally I’d be tempting in – seeing other boys enjoying football or church-hall dramatics or chess – but it would never last. Even as an adult, hobbies are fleeting and soon forgotten – usually after the first humiliation.

2) Rebelliousness. This can include music-based cultures – perhaps punks or (more recently) emos where the “shock” is mainly delivered through inappropriate dress. Yet it could develop into something more serious – perhaps indulging in misdemeanours relevant to the social backdrop of the sufferer. This includes becoming disruptive in class, being a petty vandal, a shop-lifter, car-jack, or even just a smoker. Bullying or, if less confident, becoming one of the bully’s lieutenants is – surprisingly – another trait of the classic High-FF (anything that rejects mainstream behaviour).

3) Exam stress. This is an obvious one but even mild fear of failure can cause extreme exam stress, with High-FFs potentially taking their avoidance tactics (conscious or otherwise) to extremes. Feigning illness (or even experiencing the illness), panic attacks and even deliberately sabotaging the exam are all avoidance tactics (perhaps feigning an “I don’t care” attitude).

4) “Dream fulfilment” careers. Some of the most outwardly-ambitious people may, in reality, be indulging in High-FF avoidance of sensible but challenging career choices. These can include those focused on “wildest dream” career choices such as pop stardom or TV fame. Crucially, the near-impossibility of achieving the dream means they will be kindly judged for being “a trier”, and it may mask their avoidance of realistic but challenging career choices (usually involving qualifications). Watch the early episodes of the X-Factor or any other reality TV show for examples.

5) Acting the clown. This one can follow us all the way through our lives. High-FFs are often the school, office or shopfloor clown – the joker that everyone likes, despite (and partly because of) their lowly status. On the surface at least, being the popular cheeky-chappie appears to be more important to the office clown that making progress. However, it's usually a mask hiding an inner sense of inadequacy.

6) Avoiding promotion. High-FFs can actively seek to avoid promotion, even when they are the obvious candidate. Excuses may vary (including claiming a “fear of success”) but it is usually based on an inner conviction that failure and – importantly – humiliation will result. Many declare themselves happier among the troops than the officers or show no desire to “fall out with Fred/John/Joan” who may be contesting the promotion.

7) Criticising and feuding. The High-FFs view of his or her workplace (or school, studio, college) is most likely to be a negative one. Indeed, High-FFs are usually highly critical of the way all external life is executed – sometimes publicly and vocally so. They can be part of the moaning canteen gang – perhaps its leader. And they can direct their criticisms at particular individuals – usually those they fear. Inevitably this leads to petty rivalries that can even develop into full-blown and disruptive feuds. Oddly, the other end of the scale – over-enthusiasm – can also be a mask to hide self-perceived inadequacies.

8) Injustice convictions. This was definitely one of my major giveaways – assuming slights or insults were meant and personal, looking (and usually finding) prejudice or favouritism to others (real or otherwise), developing acute paranoia about the intentions of colleagues and managers. Of course, these can turn into self-fulfilling prophesies if we are not careful, and can also lead to a disastrous vengeful attitude. In its extreme, this can lead to pilfering and absenteeism and other misbehaviour based on a “why shouldn’t I?” mentality.

9) Poor luck. High-FFs are convinced they have poor luck. That they are always in the wrong place at the wrong time, especially at those crucial moments. Job interviews are blighted by late trains or random illnesses (food poisoning from a banana was one of mine). New jobs or promotions have unexpected crises or challenges visited upon them only after we arrive – all seemingly beyond our control. Of course, in reality we are searching the horizon for icebergs, and immediately manning the lifeboats, rather than giving them the wide berth the previous captain quietly managed.

10) Choking. This is perhaps an obvious one but one no less harmful for that. Job interviews, presentations, key meetings – those important moments that require a strong performance are the very moments we lose our self-confidence and “choke”. We may even develop physical traits such as the shakes, or sweats, or a wobbly voice. More usually we say stupid things, forget obvious answers and come across as a fool: the usual self-fulfilling results of High-FF behaviour, in other words.

My webpage.

Luck: The Winner's Curse

A repost from the old blog of posts I like.

My wife calls it the “Kelsey Effect” – the idea that as soon as I alight upon something they or it become subject to a series of unexpected mishaps. Cars break down, houses crumble, companies collapse, even whole industry sectors go into crisis. Horses, football teams, charities, even previous girlfriends have all suffered misfortune once they have won my attention. And my wife also likes to joke about the “Kelsey Cloud" that follow us on holiday, pointing out that we even had rain on our trip to the Sahara Desert.

Certainly, from a young age I have considered myself unlucky. Always in the wrong place, at the wrong time – too far from the action or ill-prepared for the events unfolding disastrously in front of me. But I don’t anymore. Not because my luck has changed, although I’m most definitely in a more fortunate place than I’ve ever been. The reason I no longer feel unlucky is because I no longer believe in the concept of luck.

In Make Your Own Luck (2005), Eileen C. Shapiro and Howard H. Stevenson focus on the idea that no one ever has enough time or facts to know they are making the right judgement calls. Indeed, nearly all decisions – including life-changing ones such as what career to pursue and who, or whether, to marry – are based on incomplete information. So when someone is noted for being lucky – i.e. that the outcomes of these decisions are usually positive – people are actually admiring what Shapiro and Stevenson call that person’s sense of “predictive intelligence”.

“The higher your predictive intelligence, the more you will be able to make your own luck,” they state.

This leads to some obvious questions, such as what is predictive intelligence and how can I get hold of some? They claim there are 12 steps to gaining predictive intelligence – what they call the “gambler’s dozen”. Indeed, their main focus is on betting (although they broaden the concept), which may well make their steps for acquiring predictive intelligence not the only 12-steps programme required by those applying their recommendations too eagerly.

And this brings me to my main point. That I now view luck as the winner’s curse. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is in fact no more than rational thinking. For a start, in the vast majority of cases the word “luck” can be replaced with “focus” (a notion supported by Shapiro and Stevenson).

Certainly, I noticed that my luck seemed to change once I became fully focused on a particular goal, at least with respect to that goal. Opportunities would appear at the right moment and obstacles disappear – I’d come across the right person or piece of information just as I needed them or it. Yet this wasn’t luck at all. It was intense concentration. In fact it was my Reticular Activating System (RAS) – the area of the brain responsible for regulating arousal.

We all have this, although may not recognise it as such. I used to call it my “antennae” – the element of my consciousness that seems to notice the things that currently interest me. Usually this is frivolous. If I was thinking of buying a particular car, for instance, my RAS would start noticing that model whether it was parked in a side street or flashing by on the opposite motorway carriage. Or if I was wearing a particular brand of scarf, I’d notice people wearing that scarf when I’d previously ignored them. Yet even with respect to business opportunities or – more recently – ideas for blogs or additional thoughts for the book, options would present themselves and events conspire in my favour, when previously they had gone ignored or conspired against me: all thanks to my RAS.

Of course, the RAS alone cannot help us. We need to programme it correctly – most obviously by adding strong long-term objectives with calculated short and medium-term milestones. Indeed, most “unlucky” people can also blame their RAS – as can many that blame their poor fortune on innate ineptitude or even prejudice against them. Programme your RAS accordingly and it will deliver what you seek – including confirmation of inabilities or bias, and certainly including misfortunes to confirm jinx-style qualities of the “Kelsey Effect” type. Programme it positively, however, and your RAS will help turn the fortunes of even the unluckiest of people.

And that, of course, brings us to that famous quote, attributed to Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Samuel Goldwyn and God knows who else: “Of course I believe in luck. And the harder I practice the luckier I get”, although perhaps our own version should conclude: “And the more I focus on my long term objectives, the harder my RAS works in my favour”.

Finally, it is worth noting that there are also positives to being unlucky. For me, my poor luck has meant an adulthood hating gambling, in all its forms (including that “tax on the stupid” known as the National Lottery), which I now view as an enormous blessing. Certainly, I consider those “lucky” gamblers cursed – their arrogance making them over-estimate purely mathematical probabilities. More-often-than-not gambling results in the most rapid levelling of the “lucky” and the “unlucky” known to man, a fate that I’ve joyfully avoided thanks to my “poor luck”.

Poor luck has also led me towards a hatred of “winging it” in meetings and presentations. I am consistently the best briefed and prepped, precisely because I assumed I had to make amends for my poor luck – a weakness that, over the years, has increasingly worked in my favour. In fact this adds a last consideration on luck – that of age. As a young person the cocky assurance of “the lucky” is certainly a plus when it comes to winning the girl/boy or convincing employers to give them that first break. But life is a marathon, not a sprint, and luck will inevitably go against those relying on that most ephemeral of attributes. Meanwhile, I have assumed poor luck from the start, which has prepared me well for the inevitable puddles along the way, many of which I now deftly sidestep – including those on our summer holiday.