In childhood, each of us has been severely criticized or punished for something insignificant, such as being criticized by our parents for accidentally breaking a bowl. At that time, we may feel that these small mistakes are so serious that we are afraid to make mistakes, or we may not dare to admit them after making them, and we may not be afraid to face them. However, as the years go by, when we look back on our past experiences, we can realize that the mistakes of our childhood are not as serious as we thought at the time.
But strangely, even as adults, the sound of broken bowls and the fear of being blamed seem to follow us and permeate our lives. In every moment of striving for an uncertain result, every time we hesitate to try something new, the feeling of making a mistake always echoes in our hearts. We still can't seem to shake off that fear, and we still can't objectively realize that it was just a bowl that was broken.
So why are we in this predicament? How can we overcome this fear and face failure honestly and objectively? Today, let's explore this question together.
1 When the family is our world
When we are young, before we are exposed to school and society, it is easy to think that family is our whole world. In this limited environment, where our relationships and living space are confined to the family, and our lives have only one dimension, we naturally magnify the gravity of everything that happens in this dimension. At the same time, as children, we do depend on our parents for our survival. So I am very worried that if my parents are disappointed in me, we may lose their support and care.
At the same time, according to the theory of self-concept, our perception of ourselves is formed through social interaction and feedback. But in childhood, most of our interactions take place at home. When we are young, we have not yet developed a stable self-concept, and it is easy for us to rely on the Ta's evaluation of ourselves to know ourselves. At this stage, the evaluation from family members, especially authoritative parents, is particularly important. A compliment or criticism from a parent can directly affect our understanding of ourselves. Maybe the parents just said "how is your child so careless" about the fact that the bowl was broken. But because we lack the objective thinking to look at events separately from ourselves, and we lack evaluation from their perspective to refute this sentence, we may take this sentence as a judgment of our own "bad boy" status.
However, as we grow older and are exposed to larger and larger worlds, we begin to realize that this severity is illusory and limited. Realizing this will be the starting point for us to re-teach ourselves to 'make mistakes'.
2 Naturally learned ways to survive
In psychology, we often observe that people show a tendency to avoid behavior when faced with mistakes, which is closely related to our internal self-protection mechanisms. Imagine if I was criticized for losing my new toy. For the rest of the year, I would avoid being criticized or punished again in order to avoid making the same mistake again, such as not taking toys out to play with again, or even not buying any new toys.
The psychological mechanisms behind this behavior can be explained by behaviorist theory. This is because individuals tend to learn to avoid sexual behavior when faced with punishment, that is, to avoid punishment by limiting their behavior. This is especially common in childhood, when our decision-making and coping abilities are not fully developed, and it is easier to avoid any behavior that could lead to negative consequences by "one size fits all" at the source. Over time, we will start to be afraid to express it, because if we don't say it, we won't be wrong. It is also possible that we will start to ignore our own needs and deliberately please Tatars, pushing ourselves against our own desires and being pushed by this habit.
Over time, this avoidance of sex can gradually evolve into not being afraid to express your thoughts and emotions. As we grow up, we may feel that not expressing our opinions or needs reduces the likelihood of conflict or criticism from others. Therefore, we will choose to remain silent and not dare to express our true thoughts in order to avoid possible negative consequences.
On the other hand, we may also adopt another coping strategy, ignoring our own needs and deliberately trying to please them. In this way, we avoid criticism from the other party, and in the long run, we often become what we often call a "people-pleasing personality".
3 Accumulation of fear
There is a concept in psychology called failure phobia. Some people feel that failure itself is not a good thing, and isn't it normal to have rejection of such things? But in reality, when we begin to need to maintain a sense of security by maintaining a sense of security by not failing and not making mistakes, the rejection of making mistakes goes beyond the realm of reason. We will begin to think that the failure of things is a sign of our ability, and when we do not perform well, we will feel that there is something wrong with our ability, and then we will look down on ourselves and feel that we are a worthless person.
This psychological phenomenon can be understood as a mechanism of self-preservation. When we begin to rely too much on success to maintain our self-worth, failure becomes a threat to our self-esteem and sense of security. We begin to see failure as a form of self-depreciation, associating our own worth with success. Therefore, when we face failure, it is not only a failure of a specific goal, but also a threat to our self-identity and self-worth.
When we are overly sensitive to failure, we may be afraid to try new challenges or opportunities. Because of the fear of failure, we may doubt our own abilities and think that we are not capable of taking on new challenges, so we choose to run away. This self-doubt and withdrawal can limit our room to grow and keep us stagnant.
This fear can also cause us to develop procrastination. When faced with a task or challenge, we may fear that we will not be able to complete it successfully, so we choose to procrastinate to avoid facing possible failures. However, this behavior only exacerbates the problem, as procrastination often leads to a backlog of tasks and a tight schedule, ultimately increasing the likelihood of failure.
1. Re-understanding our environment
Now, let's take a step back and take a fresh look at our living environment. Think about how our lives can be divided into several aspects, who are the people we come into contact with more often, and what are the things that are important to us. How do we answer this question in our childhood?
After doing this little experiment, we may find that when we were children, our lives were confined to the family, and the people we often came into contact with may only have a few playmates besides our family. On the other hand, when we grow up, our life scenarios will increase, in addition to family, there may also be school, workplace, offline or online social circles, and the people we come into contact with will include colleagues, friends, teachers, partners, etc. In this way, the level of our life also includes a series of factors such as career, friendship, interests, etc., and each level of relationship is only a part of our life, so even if we make mistakes in a relationship, it will not affect us so much.
When we fail at something, we can move on to another dimension to do something that gives us a sense of accomplishment. For example, when we are not in a good state when we are not productive at work, we can still talk to friends after work or do something that interests us to gain a sense of accomplishment. When we broaden the dimension of life, the fault tolerance rate of life will also increase. Because we will find that what we once thought of as "catastrophe" is actually illusory, and whenever we think we have made big mistakes in a relationship, they are actually only a small part of life.
2 Re-understand the punishment received
When we objectively see the worries and fears of the past from the perspective of adults, we might as well understand the punishment we received at that time. Unlike in childhood, we grow up to understand that criticism is often on a case-by-case basis. When we are criticized by the teacher because we failed an exam, we can realize that the teacher is not satisfied with our learning state, it does not mean that he hates us, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with us. The dissatisfaction of the Ta people does not mean that we have done something wrong, and the fact that we have done something wrong does not mean that there is something wrong with us as a person, and the evaluation of the incident is not a denial of our personality.
This kind of objective cognition also needs to be assisted by its evaluation of the Ta aspect, and when we grow up, we can also receive more evaluations from other aspects, and understand what kind of person we really are by allowing them to interact. For example, when we feel guilty about a mistake at a social event, we may ignore what their other person says about us. However, if we are able to have an open conversation with friends, family, or colleagues, we may find that they see us far more diverse and positive than we ourselves think. This kind of communication and feedback helps us to understand ourselves more holistically, to stop focusing too much on the negative impact of a single incident, and to better cope with and understand the punishment we receive.
3. Re-feel the feeling of making mistakes
Once we have re-understood failure, we can begin to train ourselves to make mistakes. Just as we were taught how not to make mistakes when we were young, we can also teach ourselves how to make mistakes slowly. We can consciously challenge ourselves to do small things that we are not sure about, such as applying for a scholarship or taking on a small project. Anyway, the probability of failure and success is five to five, and if it succeeds, we will experience the sweetness of having the courage to try. Even if we fail, because the challenge itself is a small matter beyond our responsibility and ability, we can realize that even if it fails, it will not be a big deal. If you try a few more times, you will find that our "pain" for failure is slowly decreasing. Sometimes, it's not the failure itself that makes us miserable, but the fear and anxiety of failure in the process.
In addition to accumulating new experiences, we can also consciously review our mistakes and failures in our past lives, and we will realize that mistakes are not entirely negative, and sometimes they can be an opportunity for us to learn. For example, if we lose a document we are writing due to a mistake, it can make us frustrated and need more time to rewrite it. But if we can learn the importance of timely backups from this incident, and start to develop this habit from then on, it may help us avoid greater losses.
Usually we all have a consensus, that is: in childhood, adults should allow children to make mistakes, and let children grow up through trial and error. We may not have been well guided to be strong when we were young, but that doesn't mean we'll be trapped forever by the fear of making mistakes. We can re-nurture ourselves by understanding our mindset and changing our mindset. And as grown up children, we can cultivate our ability to tolerate mistakes in life, and when we allow ourselves to make mistakes, the resilience of our lives will develop in this permission.
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