How To Stop Fearing Mistakes

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're gonna learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey. Welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and today we're gonna be talking about your feedback fear of mistakes and how to free yourself of that so you can approach things in life with a lot more ease, a lot less pressure and perfectionism and worry and stress, which not only feels a heck of a lot better, it also radically improves your performance, your results. So really, it's a win, win. And the only reason we don't approach it in this new way, habit, pattern, fear, familiarity, and a lot of other sneaky payoffs which we're going to get into in today's episode. We're also going to be looking at some of the ways that you might fear mistakes that are a little more subtle, that might not even initially show up as a fear of making mistakes. So you don't think that's what's going on, but that's what's going on underneath. And of course, we're only talking about a mindset or an approach that's a solution to all this so you can freely move forward without so much of a sense of you're on a tightrope. Right? Because I think that's the feeling if I'm afraid of making mistakes is I'm on a tightrope here, and if I fall, ooh, that's not going to be pretty. So we're going to hopefully, by the end of this episode, have you a sense of permission to fall and to realize it's not a tightrope. 70ft in the air, you might just fall over onto a dirt path and pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and it's really no big deal at all. So I'm excited to be here with you today. Thank you so much for your engagement with this show. And if you've done a review, I know so many of you have left a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this, and if you've done that already, thank you so much for your support. And if you haven't done that, I would invite you and encourage you to do that now. It helps me reach a lot more people with this show, which is the whole purpose to spread Operation Mass Liberation. Every single one of us who might feel afraid, isolated, there's something wrong with me. And then hiding in our own lives, living a defended life. And I know you're shifting that now. I have shifted that. And wow, life can be a lot better when we're not hiding and attacking ourselves. So let's help others break free as well. And speaking of break free, let's talk about breaking free to make mistakes. First of all, nobody actually wants to make mistakes, but we can train ourselves to have them be an inevitable part of the process. But first things first. Let's look at your fear of mistakes. Is there a place in your life where you are consciously afraid of making a mistake? When I ask clients, this often work can be in an environment where you're afraid to make a mistake. You know, I don't want to make an error on this report that I'm doing, on this process that I'm going through. I don't want the client to be upset. I don't want this potential prospect to not want to buy or take the next step. And so there's a pressure that people might feel at work to not make mistakes. But that's not the only place maybe you feel it socially, right? I don't want to make a mistake in this conversation. I got to do this conversation, right? I don't want to say the wrong thing, not know what to say. Say something that maybe someone didn't think was funny, approach them in the wrong way, and then get rejected, right? So we have a list of ways that we're afraid of making mistakes socially. And you could bring this to anything, right? Like, I don't want to make a mistake with my eating plan. I don't want to make a mistake with my exercise. I don't want to make a mistake with this project that I'm doing on my computer for fun, right? And so we can bring this fear to everything. That's the conscious level. And then there's the unconscious level, which you might not even be that aware of, but it manifests as things like perfectionism, right? You might not be actively thinking, I'm so scared of making a mistake. You just feel this overwhelming drive to like, I gotta master this. I gotta do this perfectly. And it's really focused on doing it perfectly. But it doesn't take too much scratching beneath the surface to see that there's like this raw ocean of terror underneath. Like, oh God, I don't want to make a mistake. So that's one thing is perfectionism. There's also procrastination and avoidance are often about fear of making mistakes. So I don't want to get to that. I don't want to do that. And sometimes it's about just the effort of doing the thing. You know, sometimes the things we're procrastinating on involves some effort, whether it's physical, mental focus, emotionally discomfort, something like that. But often the reason it's uncomfortable is because we're afraid. The reason it's gonna be emotionally uncomfortable is because we're afraid of the mistake underneath. So let's take a second now and ask this question which you may have asked yourself before, but you, you might not have ever what is exactly a mistake? In fact, let's look it up right now. Define mistake, an action. Well, actually before I share the definition, what do you think? What do you think a mistake is? How would you dictionary define a mistake for me? Okay, well that's enough time to think about it. What the dictionary, what Google says is a mistake is an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong or to be wrong about. And synonyms, which I love by the way, they give you a sense of a word. Error, fault, inaccuracy, oversight, misunderstanding, fail, goof, boner. I don't, I thought that word meant something else, but maybe it also means mistake. By the time I was a middle schooler it did not mean mistake, that's for sure. Fallacy, gaffe, slip up, miscalculation, blunder, Blunder is good. Blunder doesn't have the same horrible connotation. Blunder is almost a little bit humorous and sort of non threatening, at least in my association to that word. In any case, a mistake is when you do something wrong. Wrong. Of course you should fear doing something wrong because being wrong is terrible. Right. But how do we determine whether it was right or wrong? And this is where it gets really interesting. Well, sometimes there's an objective right or wrong. Right. You know, like you're supposed to circle all the red dots and you missed one on the test. That's wrong. That's a mistake. That's obvious. It's very clear. That's things like, like truly an academic test. Usually a multiple choice one though, because if there's like a written answer, there's probably several there's many different ways you could write that answer. Right? But we're talking about very specific, factual information you're being tested on for, like a boards exam or what's the one for lawyers? Bars. The bars. The bar. Right. You know, it's like there's a correct answer for this question, and you either get it or you don't. So that's a clear wrong. But how often are you taking tests in your life right now? Unless you're in a phase of study, most of us are not going around taking tests every day of our lives. And so what's right and wrong, therefore what's a mistake and what's not a mistake is actually a bit more unclear. So let's take that social example. You know, I go approach somebody and I say, hey, how's it going? What are you up to today? And they look at me like I'm a freaking weirdo because we don't know each other. And they're like, how dare you talk to me? I don't even know you. Was that a mistake? Did I do something wrong? Well, it just depends on how you look at it, right? In their mind. I did. In their mind, it's like, hey, you don't talk to people you don't know, buddy. What do you think this is, a friendly universe? Get the hell out of here. But in my reality, I've done nothing wrong. I've just, you know, checked out to see if that person was open for some connection. And so it's. And we can break this down to more and more areas of your life. Let's take the work example. There's a client I'm working with. He's my mastermind program, and he made a career change into sales. And he's noticed that he's very stressed out and he's newer to the job. And it's a long sales cycle, like 18 months from initial contact to the actual purchase and money being transferred. 18 months, that's a year and a half. That's a long sales cycle. And so he's been at the job for like nine months, six months maybe, and hasn't completed a sale yet, which makes sense because they typically take a year and a half. And so he's checking with the other few salespeople and trying to learn best practices and determining what he's doing is right. And, you know, and he felt this sense of constantly making mistakes. And so we were exploring it in a call not that long ago. I said, well, what. What is right and what is wrong in this situation. In his mind, it was right if every action led to the next step in the process. So he calls them up and they're like, yeah, let's have a longer conversation. And they have a longer conversation. It's like, great. Let's, you know, move forward to the next step with every person, every call. Now, if you've ever done anything in sales, you'll know that it doesn't work that way. That yes lives in the land of no, that you have a lot more conversations than you do someone wanting to move forward, and you have a lot more conversations until someone actually buys something, regardless of what industry you're in. You know, close rates, as they might call it, are not like 100%. They're not even 50%. They're usually much lower than that. And that's with people that are already on the next step with you. And so he's feeling like he's making mistakes all over the place, because his perceptions of how it should go and what should happen are all wonky. And I'm sure you've done this, too. I felt that way when I was younger when it came to dating and relationships. I was like, I don't want to make a mistake. What's a mistake? Well, that's if someone doesn't want to. If she doesn't want to talk to me, if she doesn't want to date me. And so therefore, I can't really progress in that area of my life because all I'm doing is making mistakes every time it doesn't go the way that I want, which is actually more the norm. Sometimes someone's open to talking to you. Sometimes the person wants to buy right away. Sometimes you talk to someone and two minutes later, like, yeah, you're great. I want to date you. But other times, a lot of the time, that's not how it works. You know, the person doesn't want to talk to you. Or maybe, you know, when I was approaching women, she would want to talk to me, but that didn't mean anything, right? We had a friendly conversation for a couple minutes. That was it. And so it's all about how you're holding it and how you're framing it of whether it's a mistake or not. And that's really important because I think you can be holding something where you're making mistakes all the time, you're doing something wrong all the time, and this makes it feel scary. And then to add salt to the wound, we interpret the wrongness as badness. So if that person didn't Want to talk to me? If I said the joke that no one laughed at, if this person doesn't immediately want to move to the next step in the sales cycle with me, that not only was that a mistake and that's wrong, but that was really bad of me, and I'm really bad. And there becomes this kind of oppressive pressure, upset, dislike, and freak out inside because you are really a bad person for doing something so wrong. And that's when it starts to get really painful. And then so we do the only thing that makes sense at that point, which is to try to minimize our mistakes because they're wrong and they feel so bad because I am bad. At least that's how the story goes, that I'm going to minimize my mistakes. And there's a couple ways you can minimize your mistakes. One is I can be so perfect, I can get so good that I don't make any, or I can just avoid taking shots. I don't miss any baskets if I don't. If I don't take any free throws. And this is what most people unconsciously do. They reduce their action rate or their risk rate because they don't want mistakes and they don't want to feel bad. Isn't this true? Can you look in your life and see a place that you've done this? I certainly have. And so we need to find a new way, right? Because this isn't working, and it's really stressful and it's really painful. And the new way I would suggest for you and me and all of us to do is to learn through doing. Learn through doing. It's the only way to learn. And it's through doing. And we know this intellectually on some level, but we have to consciously remind ourselves because of all this programming of I don't want to make a mistake, and then I'm bad because I did the wrong thing. So let's zoom out and look at anyone learning anything ever. Do you know how to walk? How'd you learn how to walk? You know, my. My brother's got a little toddler. She's absolutely adorable. And, you know, she's wobbly. She can walk, and then she's also wobbly and she falls on her butt all the time. That's how it works. Did you ever learn how to ride a bike? Did you ever learn how to type? Do you know how to type? You know, many people type unconsciously at this point. And when you type, do you remember learning how to type and making lots of mistakes? I remember when I was A kid, middle school, maybe high school even. We had like a typing class. It's part of the general curriculum. And there'd be a typing program and you'd be. It would be showing you words on the screen and you're. They showed you. I don't know what they call. Is it like home position? I'm actually looking at the keyboard right now and I do it and I type that way. You put your hands on asdf h and then your right hand is on hjkl right in the middle of the keyboard and you kind of flick around. And I learned how to type without looking at what I'm typing. I learned how to type very swiftly. And with the training, you know, you reduce your errors, but you still make a lot of mistakes as you're learning how to type. And if you, if you don't, if you're kind of more of a hunt and pecker type of person and you try to learn the, the home key way of typing, you actually are worse at first. And this is true for a lot of skills now. You can get a lot better and ultimately way faster without looking. But at first you're going to get worse because you're trying to learn a new thing. You make a lot more mistakes. And this is what trips people up when you're trying to learn something new or when you're. You did something, I don't know, ineffectively for a long time. And there's a better way to do it when you first start trying the better way when you first start doing something new, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And the only way to learn is through doing. And the thing that can help you one is just to see the truth of this. And hopefully you're looking at these examples I'm sharing and you realize, oh, that's how it works for everything. A key takeaway here to remember is that you are not somehow special and exonerated from the learning curve like the rest of us, right? Someone wants to pick up the guitar and be freaking Jimi Hendrix. And it's like, dude, you don't get there without 10,000, 20,000. I don't know how hours that guy played. And look, you don't have to be Jimi Hendrix to enjoy the guitar, but you want to get better at it. You don't get to avoid the phase where your fingers don't do what you want them to do and you make buzzy sound. You don't get to avoid that phase. You want to do sales. You don't get to avoid the phase where you're uncomfortable and you hate rejection and it hurts, and then you're not very good at it, and you're afraid to ask, so you don't want to be too pushy. And you're also too passive. And so you have to learn how to do it better. If you want to learn how to be more bold socially, then you have to learn by trying to approach people in various ways. Literally walking up to another human that you've never met before and starting a conversation with them. And some of those are going to be rocky and bumpy, and some of those are going to go real smooth. And with something like that, it's not a steady, repetitive experience like taking a swing at a golf ball. Well, the golf ball is always the same. I mean, you might do different things in your swing, but the golf ball is just sitting there. But when it comes to social confidence and building that muscle of conversation mastery, I mean, when you approach that, that human's not a golf ball. And so you can come in with the greatest swing, and they might not want to talk to you, or they might be really hard to connect with. They might be really walled off and scared and socially anxious and awkward and all kinds of walls they're putting up consciously or unconsciously. And sometimes you can override those and, you know, kind of connect underneath all that stuff with them, and sometimes you can't. So we could go on and on and list every single thing here, but at the end of the day, you got to learn through doing. And so how to help yourself do that is going to be to one, know that this is the way that it works. Number two, you're not specially exonerated from the Lear curve like the rest of us. We all got to go through it. And then number three, a key thing that can really help with this is to just let it ride for a little bit, you know, expand your time horizon. Because sometimes we can get so stressed out about. But I didn't get there today. I made a mistake today. And behind that, it's like, but I need to get the end result now, now. And just realize, like, look, it's gonna take a little more time than that. And this is a phase. And you're going to look back on this phase a year from now, five years from now, like, oh, I remember when it's like me, when I look back to my phase of learning social confidence, and it was approaching women, but also approaching everybody. I was a college student in Santa Barbara, my final year of college, and I would go to the downtown area to build my social confidence. And I was so scared driving down there. It was a beautiful downtown, A little strip and shops and restaurants, and just a gorgeous tile and red stone. Kind of almost looked like a European setup or something. And I remember being so freaking scared to drive down there. And some conversations were so awkward. And sometimes it was awkward because they didn't want to talk to me. Sometimes I was just so scared. I remember I approached these two young women. One of them was photographing the other. I just walked right up to him, and this is. I was brand new to this kind of thing, and I just didn't. You know, it wasn't super smooth or anything, but I was just like, hey, I'm sick and tired of living in this cage of fear. I'm gonna go practice this stuff. So I went over to these two women. I was like, what are you taking photos for? And it actually went into a nice conversation. And I learned about, if it's going well with the woman, maybe you could ask for her number. That was kind of new. I was learning, was making mistakes all over the place on that. And so I asked her, actually for email. And so I said, it's been great talking with you. You know, I'd love to get your email. So she. She gave me her email, and I felt like walking away. I'm the man, you know? Like, that had never happened in my entire life. That was the very first woman that I didn't know that I started a conversation. We chatted for, like, five minutes on the street corner with her and her friend. I. When I walk away with her email address, and I was like, I'm the greatest. That was not a mistake. What's the opposite of mistake? That was a victory. That was right. And so I get home. I don't email her that day because you don't want to look desperate. So I email her the next day. I said like, hey, it was great meeting you. You know, let's grab some coffee sometime. And she replies back and says, hey, it was nice to meet you too. I'd love to, but I have a bf, you know, wish you all the best or something like that. I read this email, and I kid you not, I look to my left and right, say to nobody in the room, maybe my cats were on the bed. What is a bf? I didn't know. I wouldn't ask my roommate. He's like, dude, that's boy. That's. That's boyfriend. I was like, oh, well, then why did she give me her email? She probably didn't want to say no, right? She was just being nice. In any case, that then it turned into a mistake. Wretched mistake, right? But if you just let yourself learn through doing. Now, when I look back at that time in my life, as stressful as it was, it was so exciting. It was so fresh and alive and I feel such love. And I just smile and love that 21 year old. 20 years ago now, 20 years ago, I feel so old and wise and I look back at him like what he was just a kid running around the little baby face. And I just felt a lot of love and appreciation and making mistakes all over the place and it's no big deal. And you can look back at any time in your life with that same nostalgia, humor, love, appreciation, even a challenging time like, oh, wow, I remember that time I was really struggling in my career. And now looking back on it, wow, here I am now. Alright, so let's talk about how you can turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to pick something that you've maybe been holding back or doing slowly or trying to tread cautiously so as to not fall off the tightrope and make a wretched mistake. And I want you to actually experiment with doing something until you make a mistake, right? So that if it's a social side of things, we like talking to people until there's what you might deem a mistake. If it's work, it's taking bold action and doing things until you make a mistake. And then the goal here is to get a mistake, a real one, not just some fabricated one, but an actual mistake, towards something that's meaningful to you. And then take a few minutes, slow down and watch what you're doing with it. Study the pattern. Are you making it mean that something terrible is happening? Are you making it that you're bad? And then really tune in and apply what you're learning in this episode to shift it, because then you can bring consciously a new way of being with mistakes, which totally frees you up and helps you move forward so much faster in your life. So thanks for being with me today. And until we speak again, you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. 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