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.

Even for Kings, the monkey comes too

Another long flight and another chance to catch up on the latest(ish) movies: this time The King’s Speech. I was amazed: the parallels between King George VI’s (Bertie’s) speech impediment and fear of failure – the psychological condition I write about in What’s Stopping You? (out this month, by the way) – are remarkable, as were some of the routes to recovery.

The film hinges on the king’s introduction to Lionel Logue, a maverick Australian speech therapist who flew in the face of conventional thinking when it came to the treatment of impediments. Prior to seeing him, the poor prince (then the Duke of York) had to endure a succession of physicists treating it as a purely physiological problem. They had him chewing marbles and even smoking. Yet it was only Logue who saw the condition as psychological and the actual impediment as its physical impact: a symptom of the underlying mental condition. This was evidenced by the fact the stammer was exacerbated by fear – for instance when talking to his father (George V) or when being confronted by his brother (Edward VIII).

And it’s here where the similarities with fear of failure become compelling.

So while the physiological exercises were ongoing, Logue probed the prince’s mental condition – breaking through after a few whiskies. Once Bertie was willing to divulge his childhood traumas – mainly his nanny’s rejection and humiliation of him – Logue was able to identify this trauma as the root of the future king’s stammer, when previously the assumption was that it was something “he had always had”.

Logue’s experience as a speech therapist was in treating returning Anzacs from the western front during the First World War. Many had such serious shell-shock their speech was majorly affected. These days, we call shell-shock Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and, as I write in What’s Stopping You? it is the key prerequisite for fear of failure – especially cases involving early episodes of public humiliation or rejection.

Of course, the fear of failure version is mild compared to shell-shocked soldiers but the responses are apparent nonetheless – and they include stammering as much as they include fear of failure. High-FFs (as I call those with a high fear of failure) fear rejection and the humiliation of failure, which leads them to pursue avoidance tactics with respect to tasks, careers and even personal life choices: anything that brings the potential for humiliation.

Yet I was further fascinated by Logue’s treatment of Bertie. As the abdication crisis gathered force it became apparent our stammerer was going to end up king and be forced to embrace his biggest fear: of public speaking, including via the new technology of live radio broadcasts. It was obvious to Logue, however, that fear triggered Bertie’s doubts about his abilities to speak fluently, which then became self-fulfilling.

This is identical to those with fear of failure. I call this the monkey on our shoulder, who whispers doubt into our ear at the very moments we need to be brave. Logue could rouse Bertie into angry – but perfectly fluent – outbursts. Swearing and singing were also not a problem. But it was those moments of tension – the very moments he needed fluent speech – that his fluency would elude him. And those moments in front of a live microphone were sheer terror.

This certainly struck a chord. I can remember the first time I was on national radio – on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. As the presenter turned to me the monkey grabbed my ear and said: “this is it. This is IT. The whole country’s listening and you haven’t a clue what to say: have you? They should never have invited you on. You’re a fraud”.

Incapable of clear thinking, my voice cracked, which caused me to panic and retreat to hackneyed clichés. The presenter looked for a chance to escape my failing performance and rarely came back to me after that. Thanks to the monkey, I’d screwed my moment and was never invited back. My 15 minutes of fame lasted about a minute and a half.

Yet Bertie has to face the whole country – literally – at his coronation (the first to be broadcast live to the empire). So how does Logue keep the monkey quiet? By making light of the whole thing. As they rehearse he talks of the archbishop “poncing up the stairs”, of him talking “rubbish, rubbish, rubbish” – all to try and strip the archbishop of his authority (and Bertie his fear of it).

Another fear-reduction tactic used for direct broadcasts (rather than ceremonies) was for Logue to stand right in front of the king so that the broadcasts felt like no more than just another session with the therapist. Winston Churchill also offered his own wisdom – saying that he made a virtue of his own speech impediment, making his part of a distinct style (in what became probably the most famous speech-making style in history). This helped the king recover from the odd halt – stating that he had to “throw in a few so they knew it was me”. Thus the monkey’s power was neutered.

In What’s Stopping You? I discuss the potential for making a virtue of our fears and insecurities – for instance helping us realize that our sensitivities usually mean we are creative and strong lateral thinkers – traits we should harness as we seek to make progress. And that our sensitivity brings with it problems on our way up that can turn us into effective leaders once we become managers, because we understand the sensitivities of the people we lead. Certainly, I’m keen to ensure we realize that our fears are part of us. That the monkey comes too and that accepting him as a fellow passenger is an important part of our recovery.

Finally, in Logue I saw something of myself (if I’m permitted the vanity). He possessed no qualifications and was simply offering his experiences as he saw them, which allowed him to come at the issue from a different direction, and one that offended establishment figures. I too have no formal qualifications to discuss fear of failure. In fact my main qualification is as a sufferer, and as someone who’d read 100s of books on “failure”, “success”, “confidence” and “self-esteem” and found a major gap between what most psychologists stated was innate and the self-help gurus said was possible (if you follow their advice). I saw a role in researching both deeply and in trying, through writing, to both marry the two and convey this for any reader potentially stymied by their fear of failure, and other insecurities halting their progress.

I wasn’t expecting to like The King’ Speech. I expected a typical Merchant Ivory style offering of the romanticized English upper classes. But – thanks to my research into fear of failure and other fear-based insecurities – I loved it.

Feel the fear – and fully understand it before doing anything

“What’s that other book – err – oh yes, Feel the fear and do it anyway. That’s the one. Is your book the same as that one?”

I keep hearing it, so I’d better address it head on. What’s so different about What’s Stopping You? (due out next month, by the way) and Susan Jeffers’s well-known and best-selling book dealing with the fears that can prevent us from taking action?

On the surface, of course, they are similar. Both are focused on those that may have fear of failure, or other fear-based insecurities that are preventing them for achieving their potential. Both set out a course of action in order to help navigate those fears. Yet that’s where the similarity ends. In both style and content they are very different, as they are in both message and structure, and in the description of our condition and – perhaps most importantly – the journey required to prevent it disabling our progress.

A crucial aspect is the style. Jeffers invokes many case studies that feel fictional (although she states they are from her “fear classes”). They are of people such as Mary Alice, Patti, Teddy and Janet. Some want a better job. Some more respect from their partners. Others are keen to become artists or to overcome their fear of aging. These are feel-good tales of suburban redemption in which Janet goes back to college and Kevin summons up the courage to ask that girl for a date – all after a pep-talk from Susan.

Many people will be engaged by such a saccharin style, although it leaves me unmoved. I’m now in my 40s and have had plenty of encouraging chats from well-meaning people full of home-spun wisdom. Sure, the book gets more technical later (though not that much more technical), but another pep-talk from mum isn’t what’s needed in my opinion. I’d rather know why my brain reacts as it does when faced with major (and even minor) challenges. What process creates such reactions, and why are they so disabling? So I’m more of the persuasion that the sound reasoning of a psychologist (or even neurologist) is what’s required – telling me about post-traumatic stress disorder and its link, via traumatic childhood events and “fear conditioning”, to fear of failure.

I’d rather write about the permanent damage this can cause to the brain’s amygdale (a key cluster of components in the limbic system dealing with emotions such as anxiety, distress and fear). And the fact incidents of public humiliation as a young child can create an imprint generating a lifelong resetting of the brain’s default (i.e. instant) responses to potentially-humiliating situations. The fact it is this faulty wiring that leads sufferers to respond with fear is, in my view, crucial – especially as, in many cases, they don’t even realise why they are so fearful. Only from such awareness can sufferers, in my opinion, develop an appropriate strategy for progress. Yet none of this is explained in Susan Jeffers’s book.

I’m not saying there’s no room for the Jeffers approach. What I’m saying is that there’s also room for the more analytical approach. For instance, Feel the fear. . ..chapter one ends with giant and bold capitals shouting I’LL HANDLE IT! In fact, the entire chapter and much of the book is peppered with these capitalised “ra-ra” messages and this “go girl (or boy), you can do it” tone runs right through the book. This places Feel the fear…within the classic self-help genre that I’m somewhat critical of in What’s Stopping You? because, ultimately, they are asking you to become somebody you are not. In my opinion, such rousing prose soon fades. Without fully understanding our insecurities and fears they will soon resurface – usually at the first major setback.

This style of self-help book angers some psychologists because it deals with only the symptoms of the condition. They see it as an injection of foreign ideas and methodology into vulnerable people without offering any understanding of why their fears and insecurities have developed or retained such a grip on their behaviour. The assumption is that all fearful people can adopt somebody else’s personality traits. Traits that potentially go against the grain of their default and hardwired personalities. Yet “reframing” the brain of insecure people with helpful phrases that have to be repeated in front of the bathroom mirror (a Jeffers favourite) is a form of self-denial in my opinion (and the opinion of many psychologists). It is the adoption of a mask that, after the inevitable slip, can lead to a damaging reckoning.

I’ll give one (of many) examples:
“For the women reading this book,” says Jeffers, “a good antidote to any inner conflict between power and femininity is to repeat to yourself a least twenty-five times each morning, noon and night:

I AM POWERFUL AND I AM LOVED and I AM POWERFUL AND I AM LOVING.”

This has to be done aloud to allow the “pain-to-power concept” to really take hold. In fact, there is a helpful chart plotting this concept that has the word PAIN at one end, then an arrow pointing towards the word POWER. This is called the Pain-to-Power Chart and we are invited to draw it and place it on a convenient wall.

Ignoring the over-simplification of a complex mental condition for a moment, my own view of this chart if that, during my worst years with fear of failure, it would not have survived the first setback. In fact, as I was reading this I could visualise the moment it would have been ripped off the wall in anger as the pain of yet another rejection or dead-end or fear-induced self-fulfilling emotional reaction hit home. We are almost in the same territory as the hypnotisers and acupuncturists here – the world that promises “instance and transformative change” without any analysis or reflection or hard-fought re-evaluation.

Apologies. This is starting to sound like a trashing of Jeffers’s book. It isn’t meant to be. Any book that has sold so well will have helped many people take that all-important next step. And that’s a powerful thing that I’m in no position to criticise. I guess I’m simply stating that my target is the slightly more intelligent reader – someone looking deeply, as I did, at the root causes of their hardwired but disabling personality traits. Someone that wants to fully understand what is stopping them, before accepting it as part of them – a mental limb that is coming too, no matter what we say and do to remove it. But somebody determined to make progress despite the mental obstacles – through navigating the barriers thrown in our path (both externally and internally).

Which brings me to the title of Jeffers’s book – and my deepest criticism (sorry!). Having quoted over 100 books in What’s Stopping You? the only line I found worth quoting in Feel the fear and do it anyway was the title. And that was to refute its premise – at least the “do it anyway” proposition. Of course, we attack the same condition – fear of failure – but we differ fundamentally on the prescription because we have taken a different route from the diagnosis. Jeffers starts with the fear and works her way forwards, injecting helpful thoughts and tips as we pursue the goals that are triggering those fearful moments. What’s Stopping You? also starts with the fear. But it then works its way backwards, to how we got ourselves in this position. And this has a profound impact on how we should move forward from our current, stuck, status – re-evaluating our goals and seriously questioning the “do it anyway” element of Jeffers’s premise.

To explain, many fear of failure sufferers harbour inner dreams that occupy the highest-shelves of achievement. Many want to become famous via music, sport or broadcasting. Few will, because the dream is a nonsense conjured from our fear-based avoidance of challenging but realistic career choices that may involve exams and qualifications or other dreaded evaluations. In reality most fear of failure sufferers have yet to explore their real goals because their goals have all been motivated by the fear of public humiliation which, extraordinarily, can manifest itself in a willingness to pursue impossible dreams while eschewing challenging but obtainable career paths. And many sufferers may not even realise that this is where they stand – nurturing avoidance-based but inappropriate “wildest dreams” that are not goals at all. They are fantasies.

Yet Jeffers – and many other self-help writers – are focused on offering those with fear of failure the chance to, indeed, be a popstar. They are not decrying the dream as inappropriate or driven by avoidance of realistic but difficult challenges, as I am. Instead, they are saying: “go on – you can be a popstar” – despite the fact the desire to be a popstar may be yet another symptom or their fear of failure. Given this, my book is a million miles from “that other book” on the same subject.

That said, I want to end on a positive note. One thing Jeffers emphasises throughout is the need to take responsibility. And this means never “blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having or feeling”. Yet it is also not blaming yourself – because that too is avoiding responsibility. “There I am messing up my life again. I’m hopeless,” is – again – not taking responsibility (other writers such as Stephen Covey support this). In fact, Jeffers is so strong on this vital requirement for recovery that she dedicates a whole chapter on it. It’s called “Whether You Want It or Not…It’s Yours” and it’s her best – even with the cuddly tales of Jean, Kevin and Tanya.

Entrepreneurial myths - busted

I rarely pass on other people’s blog posts but thought I would in this case – from Chicago entrepreneur Jay Goltz. His New York Times blog on the eight fallacies of entrepreneurship struck a chord with me – not least because I’m currently writing and researching a follow-up to What’s Stopping You? called What’s Stopping You – Starting a Business?

One of the conclusions I come to in What’s Stopping You? is that entrepreneurship could be a strong route for a recovering High-FF (someone with high fear of failure) because it removes many of the barriers (real and perceived) to making progress in our lives: other people. While we will have to persuade our customers to buy our goods or services, we will no longer have to navigate a boss that may be blocking our path for all manner of reasons, or colleagues (otherwise known as rivals).

I also suggest that a crucial need for High-FFs is to depersonalise their progress, perhaps making them view themselves as a company – Me Inc or Me Ltd – rather than an emotional being with confidence and self-esteem issues. Crucially, this allows people to view setbacks as just that: setbacks. They are not final and irreversible confirmations of our innate inabilities but wrinkles in a continuing project. They can be navigated (though not if we are convinced they are part of an inevitable journey towards ultimate failure). And starting a company is no more than taking depersonalisation to its rational conclusion – making our progress and the progress of our company one and the same pursuit.

Yet entrepreneurship brings its own myths, and Goltz does a fine job in busting a few. For me, his best-targeted thoughts are regarding control and freedom – two oft-cited objectives for starting a business. Indeed, starting a company is probably the least controlled project you will ever undertake (with the possible exception of parenting). A spark of an idea and bags of enthusiasm may help you make the leap – but it is a leap into the unknown, no matter how long and detailed your business plan. It is impossible to second-guess what is going to happen the moment you let go of the handrail of employment: sales certainties dry up, promised partners disappear, warm leads turn icy cold in just a phone call, costs escalate, projected income melts away.

If people want control they should stay working for a large corporation or public-sector body where yearly targets are made with some degree of knowledge and optimism, and our dealings with others are regulated by the fact it is a recognised name on the door.

As for freedom – forget it! I have often mused that, in reality, I have simply built my own prison. Who’s got the key? The clients, the team, the landlord, the creditors (and the debtors come to that). No matter where I am or what I’m doing my business has me trapped. I’ve spent days on the beach with the phone clutched to my ear, negotiated contracts while on a ski-lift and dealt with staff-disputes while trying to persuade my three-year old to eat his breakfast. No matter how well you delegate, the minute the pottery’s broken, you’re the owner.

This brings me to the third Goltz fallacy I want to emphasise – “do what you do well and delegate the rest”. In fact he was a bit gentle here, saying it was “nice in theory”. In my view its suicide, even in theory. In fact, this isn’t just my view – it comes from Michael Gerber – writer of The E-Myth Revisited, which is an important book for any would-be entrepreneur. The “e-myth” he talks of is the entrepreneurial legend of swashbuckling heroism and daring-do that leads the entrepreneur towards inevitable glory, fame and riches.

And one of the crucial elements of this myth, according to Gerber, is the notion that we go into business as a “technician” – keen to exploit our technical talents for our own account (rather than the big corporation we used to work for). Yet Gerber states there are two other equally-crucial roles that we cannot ignore if our business is to be sustainable: that of the “entrepreneur” with the vision and power to drive the business forward, and that of the “manager”, making the business actually meet its obligations (to all its obligees).

Business start-ups need to be able to cope with all three roles – or find someone (quickly) who can fulfil the needs of the roles the founder dislikes. Yet, while we can delegate the role of the manager – we may find that this leads to crucial balls being dropped in execution that eventually erode our reputation. And while we can delegate the role of the entrepreneur, we may find that person soon wondering why their vision and drive is for your benefit and not theirs.

So the only role we can successfully delegate and remain a viable and growing business is that of the technician – the executioner of the product or service we are employed to do. This is the very role that we love and probably our impetus for starting the business in the first place. Yet it’s the very role we have to give up to make our company succeed.

Welcome to the world of the entrepreneur!

On choking

A very strange thing occurred to me the other day: I choked.

Of course, I mean choking as in the sporting sense – of someone suddenly rendered incapable of performing at a level that, under normal circumstances, would come naturally. These are skills and talents perfected over many years that, at a crucial moment, disappear.

In my case the talent was talking and my choking moment arrived thanks to a film crew thrusting a camera in my face in order to make a promotional video for What’s Stopping You?, which comes out next month (by the way). Faced with a camera – rather than my usual experience of facing a person exhibiting various stages of confusion or boredom – my usually fluid speech deserted me to the point where I could hardly utter four coherent words in a row.

Luckily, this was a recording and the patient film crew could just inwardly roll their eyes and start again. More usually choking occurs at the very moments where no take-two (or three, four or five) is possible. At such times a voice inside our head is shouting: “this is it, this is the moment, it’s now or never” and that very knowledge renders us incapable of performing – making choking a key psychological concern for many people, even those at the top of their game.

Choking was first recorded as a phenomenon by Dr Roy Baumeister who described in his paper Choking Under Pressure (1984) a “sudden, catastrophic breakdown in skilled performance…characterized by an inability to perform well-learned and well-practiced skills”.

And the symptoms are not just psychological. Golfers describe the “jerks” or “yips”, which are spasms impacting the lower arm, and cricket, snooker, bowling and darts all have their own physical symptoms – Eric Bristow’s “dartitis” in the 1980s being a famous example.

Yet the most famous episode of choking I can recall – or most other people come to that – involves tennis: the 1993 Wimbledon final between Jana Novotna and Steffi Graf. In fact, this incident is so famous Malcolm Gladwell uses it as his key case study when writing about “The Art of Failure” in his 2009 book, What The Dog Saw.

I’ll let him describe what happened (although most people already know):

“There was a moment in the third and deciding set...when Jana Novotna seemed invincible. She was leading 4-1 and serving at 40-30, meaning that she was one point from winning the game, and just five points from the most coveted championship in tennis. She had just hit a backhand to her opponent, Steffi Graf, that skimmed the net and landed so abruptly on the far side of the court that Graf could only watch, in flat-footed frustration...

“Novotna was in white, poised and confident, her blond hair held back with a headband – and then something happened. She served the ball straight into the net. She stopped and steadied herself for the second serve – the toss, the arch of the back – but this time it was worse. Her swing seemed halfhearted, all arm and no legs and torso. Double fault. On the next point, she was slow to react to a high shot by Graf and badly missed on a forehand volley. At game point, she hit an overhead straight into the net. Instead of 5-1, it was now 4-2. Graf to serve: an easy victory, 4-3. Novotna to serve. She wasn’t tossing the ball high enough. Her head was down. Her movements had slowed markedly. She double-faulted once, twice, three times. Pulled wide by a Graf forehand, Novotna inexplicably hit a low, flat shot directly at Graf, instead of a high crosscourt forehand that would have given her time to get back into position: 4-4. Did she suddenly realize how terrifyingly close she was to victory? Did she remember that she had never won a major tournament before? Did she look across the net and she Steffi Graf – Steffi Graf! – the greatest player of her generation?”

Of course, Graf went on to win the match, resulting in one the most memorable episodes in a women’s final. Gladwell again:

“At the awards ceremony, the Duchess of Kent handed Novotna the runner-up’s trophy, a small silver plate, and whispered something in her ear, and what Novotna had done finally caught up with her. There she was, sweaty and exhausted, looming over the delicate white-haired Duchess in her pearl necklace. The Duchess reached up and pulled her head down onto her shoulder, and Novotna started to sob.”

So what caused this faltering under pressure? For those with a fear of failure, these are the key moments where it all goes wrong – where the monkey on our shoulder gets the upper hand, no matter how hard we’ve practiced or how on top of our game (or material) we feel. Certainly, any High-FF (as I call those with a high fear of failure in What’s Stopping You?) watching that Wimbledon final would have nodded at the weeping Novotna and said, “yep, that would have been me”.

But why? What creates that all-important distinction between the Grafs and the Novotnas? Gladwell went in search of an answer and found Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. He told him about the difference between explicit learning and implicit learning, and their connection with choking.

Willingham sets his students video-game tasks and notices that they start learning sequencing games via explicit learning – focusing hard on each element of the task and consciously trying to acquire the skills and knowledge to master it. Progress with explicit learning is steady and deliberate but – because it is explicit and therefore based on awareness and concentration – slow.

Yet after a period of explicit learning, implicit learning takes over. It’s as if the brain has absorbed the conscious-learning requirements in order to master the basics and can now do them unconsciously, which allows the implicit learning system to take over. This takes place beyond awareness, so we learn faster and with far greater fluidity. Soon, we act like naturals, which is the take-off moment from which we move from good to great.

Yet, crucially for the choker, under conditions of stress, the explicit system reasserts itself. As Gladwell writes:

“When Jana Novotna faltered at Wimbledon, it was because she began thinking about her shots again. She lost her fluidity, her touch…in a sense, she was a beginner again [and one now facing Steffi Graf].”

And the same thing occurred to me when stuck in front of a camera. Ask me about fear of failure and I can bang on about it until the cows come home, get their washing done, catch up with their old mates and then leave for pastures new. Ask me to do it in front of a camera and I have to think about what I say. This is for the Amazon website so it has to make sense. It has to be accurate, fluid, confident. And it must have gravitas. Suddenly I’m no longer the cocky gobshite rattling off about 1960s experiments on American schoolkids. Suddenly, I’m staring into a camera and wondering whether my facts are correct and my turn of phrase suitable. And – as truly as if I’m facing Steffi Graf on the other side of the net in a Wimbledon final – I’ve become wracked with doubt, and that monkey on my shoulder has notched up another victory.

The upper-lower middle-class class barrier

Lunching with a friend the other day we got onto the thorny issue of class and, not least, its connection with personal progress. Just how big a barrier is it? Are the English stymied by class from the word go – a very relevant question with an Eton boy now in 10 Downing Street and a Westminster boy as his deputy?

We decided the answer is “no”, as long as you can adapt and adopt the ways of the upper middle classes, the key group of people “running” the UK. As with my earlier post on “adopting group norms” in order to fit in, giving those you want to impress the required (or acquired) certainty that you are of the “right stock” may be to your ultimate advantage.

Both my friend and I decided we were “upper lower-middle class”, which we came to define as people from a lower-middle class background who had managed to fool the upper-middle classes that we belonged in their camp. Yet we then got into listing the give-away signs that reveal you as from the right side of the tracks. That you are truly of the Upper-Middle Classes (rather than - like my friend and I - as arrivistes trying to bluff our way in).

Here were our thoughts:

1) Cars: The U-MCs drive a battered Volvo, or similar such car. Not for them the “flash mowtaa” of the wide boy, oh no. Cars are for ferrying kids and animals and large implements over potentially tough terrain – so something old, muddy and big is a must.

2) Media: Depending on their prejudices they may read various broadsheets but, at home, they all listen to Radio 4. In fact, the U-MCs may have R4 broadcasting away in several rooms simultaneously – some that have been unoccupied for weeks. The only acceptable alternative to R4 is Radio 3, perhaps playing quietly in a recess with a snoozing dog. And while our U-MCs shun the TV soaps (in fact shun anything on ITV), keeping up with the plot of The Archers is de rigueur.

3) Jobs: Mum doesn’t have one. This may seem old fashioned but, while the kids are school age, most mums are stay-at-home (yet still employ cleaners and nannies and the odd au pair). In this respect, qualifications – or past career highlights – are largely irrelevant (although she usually keeps her contact base up to date and the school PTA is staggeringly over-managed).

4) Animals: U-MC families tend to like them. Dogs and cats seem to co-habit in this world (perhaps both realising when they are well off and suspending their usual hostilities). Dogs tend to be Labradors or something else child friendly, and don’t be surprised if the odd horse, pig – or even flock of rare sheep – is loitering around somewhere in the background. Yet the opposite is true of plants – at least the indoor variety. Pot plants, I discovered to my embarrassment, are a distinctly lower-middle class taste.

5) Cooking: U-MC houses all smell of the most divine home cooking, usually prepared by the stay-at-home mum. Certainly, I’ve had to develop a tolerance for garlic (in both the primary and secondary sense). And while both men and women are accomplished foodies, they do occasionally follow a recipe, although the distinctly upper-crust intonation of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is preferred to the estuarial fruitiness of Jamie Oliver. Gordon Ramsay, meanwhile, is Scottish, working class and far too foul-tempered to be acceptable.

6) Kitchen: Perhaps oddly, the kitchen is the hub of the U-MC house (something French visitors find curious). In fact family life is often focused on a large kitchen table. And, like a branch of Starbucks, this table is capable of hosting several potentially-conflicting meetings or activities simultaneously.

7) TV: Not in the main living room (which U-MCs call the sitting room – never the “lounge”). While the latest model, TVs are usually small and tucked away in a “snug” – often a wood-panelled room with lots of yellowing books, soft furnishings and a real fire (again, often roaring away to itself).

8) Children: There are usually more than two. Peculiarly, the demographic curve for childbirth is very much U-shaped. So while the lower- and middle-middle classes produce one, two or – increasingly – no children, the U-MCs are breeding for England. It’s their badge of honour, especially if the aim is to privately educate the lot of them. Children to the U-MCs are like sports cars to a lottery winner: to be collected and displayed.

9) Arty kids: U-MC offspring all have a creative bent that many now pursue as a career – though rarely profitably. In fact, the entire concept of money is a weird one to the U-MCs. I’ve written about this before but the U-MCs have a strange attitude to their wealth: despite their obvious cash the acquisition of it is viewed as an evil. Indeed, most U-MC families only really know they’ve made it once the kids start spouting opinions somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro (please refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for an explanation).

10) Talents. U-MCs can all play musical instruments. In fact they can all play sports to a high standard – especially tennis, skiing and rugby and anything to do with horses (golf being a bit M-MC) – speak several languages (and certainly French), understand the basics of carpentry, gardening and animal husbandry and play bridge, chess and something called fives. Skills all acquired while the rest of us were watching Scooby-doo and playing knock-down ginger.

Good luck with the integration!

Got an opinion? Get it validated

We all need to be validated. External confirmation that we are making sense is vital for our self-esteem, which is why whenever we venture an opinion we immediately scout around for confirmation – and feel vindicated or isolated depending on our success in this respect.

This is the case with everyday needs – for instance, my parenting actions usually require my wife’s validation (although I notice this is less required in the opposite direction) – and the bigger themes in our life, hence the emotional exchanges when our young career choices frustrate our parents. Certainly, for my new book – a self-help book on overcoming fear of failure called What’s Stopping You? (out in April) – I sought validation. It has as its premise, an attack on the self-help industry, which not only over-promises (we knew that) but offers a cure for conditions that are, fundamentally, incurable.

Yet these are strong opinions, forcefully made: validation is required. Luckily I won it from no less a figure than Donald Kirkpatrick, the Chairman of the London Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. After many conversations and much guidance – helping me crystalise my own views on self-help and fear of failure – Donald agreed to write a summary for the book, thus giving my year-long pursuit that all-important sign-off.

Yet he did more than that. In fact, he so blew me away with his positioning of the book within the history of ideas and alongside current trends in psychological treatment I think it worth pre-publishing:

With my deepest thanks, here it is in full:
"Kelsey has identified a personal problem, the fear of failure, and – I think rightly – argues that this has a mass base. Certainly, the current zeitgeist of endless choice and 'reaching for success' encourages this, and encourages writers such as Kelsey to tackle it. Yet he actually taps into a rich tradition going back to fifth-century BC Greece.

“The people of Plato’s Athens were depressed because they had lost sight of what was good for them and were alienated by the pointless life they were leading. Then as now philosophers arose to offer an answer: that they did know what was good for the people. The project was then the injection of those good ideas into the citizenry by means of words – or rhetoric – the effect of which would be that the citizen would stop being depressed as they energetically pursued the good-life as prescribed by the philosopher.

“Kelsey has taken it a stage further and offered a criticism of this injection – stating that the positive effects of such rhetoric for the citizen are likely to wear off, rendering him or her further confused and potentially more deeply depressed.

“Yet this vein of resistance to what Plato would call the ‘philosopher kings’ also has deeply historical roots. Even in fifth-century BC Athens, Gorgias (Encomium of Helen) was profoundly disturbed by what he saw as the introduction of foreign ideas into a body. Is this not always a kind of poisoning or intoxication, he wondered? Socrates follows on: opining that the people of Athens were depressed precisely because they had been poisoned by swallowing someone else's idea of what was good for them.

“And this debate has more modern reflections. Consider the ‘positive hallucination’ first explored as hypnotism became formalised in 19th Century Europe. If via hypnotism we introduce a foreign idea into the subject's consciousness (‘I am a love God’, for example) the foreign idea sets up a forgetting of what one knows (‘I am terrified of women’) in favour of what someone else knows. The subject then negotiates the object via this ‘false connection’ and wrongly estimates his capacities – in this case rendering the hypnotised subject a clown strutting the stage as a ‘love God’ while we, the audience, snigger as the ones ‘in the know’.

“Skip forward 100-odd years and the concept of conditioning ourselves for success remains, as does the notion that success can be established on the back of a self-induced ‘false-connection’. Renata Salecl argues in her excellent new book Choice (2010) that in today’s abundance we are anxious to choose the right thing. And this often involves electing a temporary ‘authority’ that can tell us what to do. Most often in the secular modern world this authority is the self-help guru or life coach. And Sigmund Freud argues in his Group Psychology (1921) that putting anyone in a figure of ‘authority’ opens one up to ‘suggestion’ with ultimately negative consequences for our condition.

“It is in this tradition that we can understand the new authorities that are CBT and NLP, with life coaching and other motivational treatise its variants. This is sanctioned ‘positive hallucination’ (or ‘positive thinking’). If, with Plato, we accept that we do not know what is good for us, and if somehow we were off sick on the day that the ‘good idea’ was handed out, then we can accept this ‘positive thinking’ as a late and implanted alternative. Unfortunately the clinical evidence is stacking up: successes are temporary and fade away. Meanwhile, core beliefs remain unworked, and re-emerge.

“But how does it manifest? In an alternative school of hypnotism that arose in 19th Century France what was stressed was the negative-hallucination. Here a piece of knowledge is stripped out of the subject’s consciousness under hypnotic influence: for instance, ‘there is no furniture in this room’. If instructed to then proceed to close a door in a furnished room, interestingly the subject will avoid the furniture. But when asked why she took such a tortuous route, the subject offers excuses such as ‘a creaky floorboard’ or ‘I felt a draft’ rather than state the obvious truth of the furniture’s existence.

“This is the result that Kelsey is so alert to in his work. The hypnotist has not reduced the subject's knowledge of the world, instead simply reducing her knowledge of why she took the route she did. Secondly, and more importantly, is the demonstration that we do not tolerate gaps in our knowledge of the world. Faced with a ‘not knowing’ of the real reasons for what we do, we will compulsively manufacture glosses that create ‘false connections’ between things – clinging to those reasons against logical assaults.

“Kelsey’s thesis challenges this notion of ‘collective forgetting’ – as encouraged by the modern philosopher kings – in the way that a hypnotist can cause a ‘forgetting’ with a ‘negative hallucination’. He goes on to show how the omission of that particular knowledge (‘I fear failure’) leads to fictions that we then compulsively elaborate to explain how our world is, and which we then go on to defend.

“Kelsey’s philosophy is more in the Socratic tradition of pointing to the difficulty – stating that ‘fear of failure’ is a militant and systemic fact that we ignore at our peril. If we are aware that this particular conclusion (of fearing failure) pre-determines our actions, then rather than forgetting about it because it is too difficult – via rhetorical devices, or ‘negative hallucination’, or via ‘conditions of cure’ such as NLP that offer ‘suggestion’ and ‘authority’ – we bear it in mind and keep it in our sights, judging each of our actions accordingly.

“This may not lead to the glorious outcomes we hoped for, but it will lead us away from false and temporary pursuits that can ultimately underline, rather than undermine, our negative core beliefs. It also offers a strong building block for sustainable treatment by psychoanalysis, based on the underlying structures established by Freud in the 1880s.”


Donald Kirkpatrick – psychoanalyst and a founder of the London Association for Counselling and Psychoanalysis.