I’ve learned an awesome philosophy from one of my mentors recently. If practiced daily, it can allow you to enjoy any activity or situation you come across in life without the burden of fear, or any negative feeling and emotion; embarrassment, regret, etc. It’s especially perfect for those situations that you have always wanted to experience, but in the end, your fear wins you over and you go home.
It’s called Pre-Acceptance of Failure. It’s simple yet extremely effective if used correctly. Before you attempt to do anything, and it could be anything (playing a game or sport, approaching someone), allow yourself to pre-accept failure; acknowledge the fact that you might lose, might get rejected, basically fail. When you realize and accept this, you know you might fail, the fear of outcome is no longer a burden. The fear of outcome will not drive you nuts, make you not concentrate, make you mess up and choke. Instead, you can completely concentrate and simply do the best you can do, be the best you can be.
When you let go the fear of outcome; not knowing what might happen, you are free to just do your best. Result does not matter to you, the destination is pointless to you. What simply matters now is the experience, the journey. You always hear “Its the journey, not the destination” for a reason, and this is why.
So once you have given up your fear of outcome, the next and final step is to remove doubt. Sure you have now eliminated your fear of outcome, but you might find yourself doubting your skills, whatever. You have to remove doubt, and replace it with commitment. Picture fear as a break, and doubt holds you back. You eliminated the break, so whats left is either doubt or commitment. Commitment is complete absence of fear. So after you have eliminated the fear of outcome, all you have to next is go into whatever situation you go into with full commitment. The commitment of “I’ll do the best I can, win or lose(success or fail). Its the journey, not the destination.”
I have personally been practicing this daily. You could use this philosophy for situations basically every minute. You find yourself competing in a sport, wanting to approach a person; stranger, friend or family.
I found myself playing basketball with friends, and the fear of losing really catches up to me, and usually affects my game for the best or the worse. If I lose, I am pissed. But I’ll tell you what. When you forget about the result, pre-accept you might fail; your let loose from any fear of outcome, and you can just fucking have fun and actually enjoy the experience, win or lose. Its an amazing feeling.
Finaly do the thing you have always wanted to do. Let your boss know how you feel, approach a distant friend, any situation that you have stopped yourself from doing because of your fear of the outcome. It’s a blast and ultimate high when you can enjoy an activity with absolutely no fear – we’ve all been there. Imagine doing it everday though. I encourage you to try out the Pre-Acceptance of Failure, and let me know how it goes for you.
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I really enjoyed the advice you sent me last week, and was pleased to see you elaborate on the idea of pre-acceptance of failure.
For me, at least, it relates back to the whole “Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” where I consider myself a realist – and thus my response is “It depends on whether you are pouring or drinking.”
From people who don’t quite understand, they see such an attitude as cynical or pessimistic, but for me, when I consider all possible outcomes, I know that I will be fine as long as I am totally confident in my abilities. And at that point, it’s merely a matter of competence and skill… and if the outcome is favorable, great. Less than? Back to the drawing board, but I’ve learned something.
[...] exposed to a myriad of new ideas. Discovering like-minded individuals with whom I share coping strategies. Being asked serious questions, or simply being reminded of some basic facts of [...]
“Because he has no goal in mind, everything he does succeeds” — Lao Tzu
Great blog and equally great post. I’ll be reading
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[...] This means, you push yourself into a state of unknowingness, uncertainty. Take the risk by Pre-Accepting Failure. You cannot predict the outcome. Just trust yourself and your instincts. This is where time [...]
This is probably good advice for people who are accustomed to success, and over-stress when faced with failure.
Personally, I prefer the approach of thinking about the worst and about the best possible outcome of any situation in front of me. As soon as things beging to progress, you usually find yourself neither failing completely, miserably, nor totally rocking the house. This mental exercise helps me focus on dealing with the situation with less stress, since you get to focus your attention, mind and resources on the outcome that is most likely to occur — pure probability is on your side.