Afraid Of Mistakes?

Are you afraid of mistakes? Or maybe I should say, where are you afraid of mistakes? Because I think everyone in some area of their life is scared of making a mistake. I'm Dr. Zies, I'm the founder of the center for Social Confidence and the author of three best selling books. And the place that I see this coming up most for people is in a key area of their life that they are a little hesitant in, maybe struggling with confidence in. So maybe get that person who's really bold at work and who's just like, yeah, I'll make mistakes at work all day long, I'll take risks, I'll speak up, I'll go for it. But then when it comes to their personal life, to revealing what's really going on for them with a friend, with a lover, with a date that feels like, oh my gosh, I don't want to make a mistake there. And in that case, the mistake is like having feelings or being you or other people are more interpersonally. They can be themselves, they can be more authentic, but they're terrified of speaking up at work. They're like, yeah, but I could make a mistake. And in that case the mistake could be sounding, saying something in a meeting and having someone think you should know that already notice the kind of mistakes that we can be afraid of. Maybe you're like building a nuclear power plant and it's your job to do some key aspect of the sheathing of some wires or whatever and you make a mistake there, a big deal. You don't want to make a mistake there, right? Or clicking a button that's going to send a message out to thousands of people. You don't want to make a mistake there. But most of the time the mistakes that we're afraid of are not those big oops moments because once in a while those happen in life and we move forward. But it's the vague mistakes, the mistakes of looking bad, of being judged, of someone having a negative thought about me, of me having a judgment about myself because however I was, or whatever I was feeling, or whatever I did didn't live up to my perfectionistic image I have of myself. These are the mistakes that really constrict us and cause us to feel afraid all day long. The social mistakes. I don't want to say the wrong thing, I don't want to ask the wrong question. I don't want them to know that I don't exactly know what they're talking about or they don't get it, or that I'm curious or I Have questions. I don't want them to know that I don't know everything. I don't want them to know that I'm not smart enough about whatever the topic is, Right? So that's another form of mistake. And do you see how vague these are and how ever present these are? In fact, if you start to really expand to see what the mistakes are that we're afraid of making, you know, there's like hundreds of mistakes you can make all day long at work, socially, with your friends, with your family. And if you add like an emotional perfectionism in there, like you're not supposed to feel upset or irritated or down or angry or anything or anxious, then you can be making mistakes just by how you're feeling, just by existing. And this has got to stop. Can you see how this way of holding yourself and of other people and life is not conducive to confidence? It's like they. Does not compute. You cannot do that and feel consistently confident. No matter how much you achieve, no matter how many people like you, no matter how many meetings you get through and say, I didn't make a mistake there, well, the pressure's on the next time. And the only way to truly liberate ourselves is to take that pressure off and say, yes, I can make mistakes. Even better. Yes, I will make mistakes. I will make multiple mistakes today, and I won't even know a lot of them, Right? Because these mistakes aren't those huge doe moments. They're just those little things. I'll say something and someone will judge me. You could say I'm making mistakes in this video because there are people watching this video right now who are judging certain things I'm saying or the way that I'm doing something or my shirt or the background or my face or whatever. And they're like, nah, that's not. That's all wrong. That's not right. And so that's a mistake in one form or another. And if I got hung up on those mistakes, I wouldn't be recording these videos. If I got hung up on those mistakes, I wouldn't write books. I wouldn't share everything that I'm doing with the world. So where is that tripping you up right now? Where is that fear of mistakes coming in? Maybe it's multiple areas of your life, but see one right now where it's like, oh, man, that's tripping me up. And it might not be totally stopping you in your tracks, but it might be slowing you down, causing you to hesitate, causing you to take a Lot longer than needed for the next steps. So you're kind of getting in a slow movement forward, but if you just let some of that fear of mistakes go, you would just move forward fast. And it's really okay to let that go. It's really okay to allow that. In fact, other people are not holding you to that standard that you are holding yourself to. That's the biggest sort of ruse of it all, is we imagine that all this pressure is, well, they're going to judge me in the meeting, and they're not going to like me if I'm feeling that way. And this people are going to. And we're just going on and on about them. And it's not about them, it's about us. It's about you. And it's this fear of what other people are gonna say, what other people are gonna do, that we're really just judging ourselves. And so when you let that go and you say, you know what, I am not gonna judge myself for making mistakes. It's okay for me to make mistakes. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I'm allowed to do all kinds of things that have all kinds of outcomes and results. Some that go the way that I want, some that go the way that I didn't want, some that are totally unintended, that I didn't predict. All of that is allowed. And you know what I want? I want more outcomes, more results all over the map. The ones that I like, the ones I don't like, the ones I didn't predict. Because the more outcomes I'm getting, the more results I'm getting. It shows, the more action I'm taking, the more shit I'm doing in the world. And if I'm doing that, then I'm going to feel more alive, I want to feel more engaged. I'm going to be making a bigger impact. I'm going to be creating more of what I want in my life. So bring it on. And that's why at my events, we have a banner that says, celebrate failure, rejection, no, and mistakes. And we really do that. Someone makes a mistake, someone gets a rejection, someone gets a no. And we actually in the room, celebrate it. And it totally scrambles people's circuits because they're like, what you can. Ha ha ha. That's weird. You can do that. And it's like, yeah, not only can you do that, I recommend that you do that. So share down below, what are you learning? Where are you going to let go? What insights are you having that are going to free you? And what actions are you going to take? Whatever comes to your mind, just engage. Share in the comments below. That sharing, that engagement will strengthen the shifts in you and help you be able to take this into your life, into the world. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.