26 Ways To Get The Hell Over Your Fear Of Making Mistakes
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26 Ways To Get The Hell Over Your Fear Of Making Mistakes
Iām not going to lie to you: making mistakes still freaks me out. Thereās something about getting things wrong that causes me to break out into a cold sweat. Even if Iām at home playing music by myself, just the thought āWhat if I get it wrong?ā induces enough panic to throw my concentration out, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Does Making Mistakes Still Freak You Out Too?
Itās easy enough to see where this paranoia comes from. I grew up with a mother who criticised my father for almost everything that he said and did, and this led to arguments that I found very frightening. Most of those arguments were about who was right and who was wrong in the previous argument, so I learned from a very young age that it was extremely important to be right all the time if you wanted to avoid degrading humiliation and terrifying conflict.
Add to that a religion where you burned in hell for all eternity for being a flawed human being, if you didnāt accept the correct saviour. Even as a young child I knew that there were other religions from the one I was being indoctrinated with, so there were other possibilities to choose from. Being wrong about my choice of religion/saviour/deity had eternal unpleasant consequences.
And then there was an education system where your social status bequeathed by the teachers in the form of grades and your position in the class hierarchy depended on me giving the answers that they liked. Get too many things wrong, and I would find myself condemned to the class full of dead-heads.
This kind of thing can leave a lasting impact. Iām still upset about being marked wrong in 5th grade for answering that Ļ equalled 3.1415926535897, rather than the ācorrectā answer of 22/7.
When I look at the beliefs that I internalised about making mistakes and getting things wrong, they pretty much boil down to these two:
If I make mistakes, people wonāt love me
If I get anything wrong, I will be punished
Iāve long since abandoned much of the perfectionistic family, cultural and religious belief systems that I grew up with, so I no longer consciously believe that making mistakes is a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs. But just try telling that to my hyper-vigilant limbic system.
So lets see what happens when I run these beliefs through the 26 āMind linesā from L.Ā Michael Hall and Bobby G. Bodenhamerās book Mind Lines: Lines For Changing Minds to see if I can neutralise them with a little neuro-semantic magic.
The book makes a distinction between External Behaviour and Internal State. In these two beliefs, the external behaviour is āmake mistakesā and āget anything wrongā, while the Internal State is āpeople not loving meā and ābeing punishedā.
Bring on 26 Ways To Get The Hell Over Your Fear Of Making Mistakes:
#1: Specificity: Chunking Down
Which people specifically are we talking about here? Perfectionistic control-freaks? Theyāre conditional love has strings attached. Itās toxic! You donāt want it anyway. Or strangers youāll never meet? Who cares whether they love you or not? And what mistakes specifically are we talking about? Starting a sentence with the word āAndā? Who gives a fuck. If people want to be that pedantic, let them go fuck themselves. You donāt need their love either. What specifically do you mean by āwonāt love meā, anyway? Wonāt send you Christmas cards? Wonāt invite you to their lame parties? Wonāt want to hang out with you? Would you really want to hang out with anyone who doesnāt want to hang out with you, anyway? Talk about awkward.
So what exactly do you mean by āget anything wrongā? Make mathematical errors? As if anyone is going to punish you for a mistake in your algebra now that youāre a grown-up. Get an accountant if youāre that worried about it. And how exactly do you expect to be punished? You donāt get sent to jail just for making mistakes, unless thereās some deliberate nefarious intent involved or extreme recklessness that goes way beyond anything you got in trouble for in primary school.
#2: Detailing the Strategyās Sequence
You start out by doing your best at something, and nevertheless fuck it up. Then a whole brigade of loved ones, friends, associates, and strangers youāve never met all race into your head and start screaming āYou fucked it up!!!ā Next, they all abandon you in search of someone who gets everything right, every time. Nice strategy. No wonder you worry so much about getting things wrong.
Letās look at the punishment sequence:
Step 1: Make mistake (a.k.a. sin).
Step 2: Burn in hell for all eternity.
Yeah, thatās a belief system Iād like to buy into.
#3: Content Reframing: Reframe the External Behaviour by Redefining It
Perhaps thereās another way of looking at this whole āmaking mistakesā thing. Are you really ever making a mistake, or are you just learning how to be more successful next time? āGetting something wrongā could just be an exciting part of the adventure of life. Maybe other people react the way they do because they do love you, rather than because they donāt.
What you think of as ābeing punishedā might just be other peopleās way of celebrating your behaviour. If you make the mistake of committing a crime, perhaps the legal system just wants to reward you with 10 years in the company of other people who also enjoy committing crimes.
#4: Content Reframing: Reframe the Internal State by Redefining It
That unpleasant feeling that you get when you think that other people wonāt love you might just be a helpful warning sign to get you to pay more attention so youāll do a better job in future. Or maybe itās not anxiety, but excitement: youāre excited about what a great job you can do. Perhaps itās even fun to feel the edgy excitement of putting yourself out there and screwing everything up something royal, seeing as youāre such an adrenaline junkie. I mean, you must be given that you keep getting so anxious about things.
#5: Reflexive Reframing: Reflexively Apply External Behaviour to Self or Listener
Do you love other people when they make mistakes? Sometimes seeing someone make a mistake makes me warm to them because Iām witnessing their humanity. What I really hate about other people is when they refuse to acknowledge or show their vulnerability, weaknesses and mistakes. Mistakes and failures make other people more lovable to me.
Do other people deserve punishment when they do something wrong? Well that depends on how you want to see the world. If you want to see it as a harsh place where any misdeed is dealt with retributively, go right ahead⦠but excuse me if I choose not to participate in your self-created anti-nirvana. Iād rather live in a world filled with compassion and tolerance personally.
#6: Reflexive Reframing: Reflexively Apply Internal State to Self or Listener
Perhaps itās possible to love other people more when I make mistakes, because I get to see that theyāre just like me. Obviously other people make mistakes; Iāve been on the receiving end of plenty in my life. I make mistakes too. So really, weāre all just the same. I can feel the love already!
Punishing other people for my mistakes is a bit of a dickhead thing to do, but Iāve got to admit that I do it. I create these enemy images in my head of people who I think have āhurt meā by their cruel and callous actions. I think negative thoughts about them, and then try to punish them for the way Iām thinking. That doesnāt make a lot of sense, so I think Iāll quit doing that. If other people want to do it to me, thatās their own problem. I donāt need people like that in my life anyway. Let them try to āpunishā me with abandonment; Iāll have the last laugh because they wonāt be on my radar any more.
#7: Counter Example Framing
Ever had people love you even though you made a mistake? I think itās called forgiveness, but donāt ask me because Iām not an expert at it. In fact, ever had people love you more because you made a mistake? I screwed up my routine at a stand-up comedy gig, and people told me afterwards that they loved that part the best. I always like it when other comedians mess up on-stage and I get to see their vulnerability. Mistakes are awesome for generating love and affinity between people!
You donāt always get punished for getting things wrong. Sometimes the universe rewards us for our mistakes. Itās a golden rule of theatrical improvisation that there is no wrong, and the bigger you can fuck it up, the better it generally goes. The rules that applied as a child in primary school generally operate the other way around as an adult in the real world.
#8: Positive Prior Intention Framing
Everybody loves you regardless of what you think of as your āmistakesā. The only reason they ever even bothered to point your flaws and weaknesses out to you in the past, was because they cared enough to let you know ways you could be even more awesome. The people who punished you in the past were just helpful Pavlovian behaviourists who wanted to condition you for even greater excellence in the future.
#9: Positive Prior Cause Framing
The reason some people donāt love you isnāt because you make mistakes sometimes; itās because they just havenāt gotten to know you yet. Theyāve very discriminating and just donāt want their love taken for granted. Other people want to be absolutely sure that when you do experience their love, that it feels real and meaningful to you.
Adults who punished you as a child were just preparing you for an exciting adulthood. They wanted to highlight the contrast between childhood, where you got punished for mistakes, and adulthood, where you get rewarded. They wanted you to feel the absolute joy of discovering for yourself that the more action you take as an adult, the more mistakes you make and the greater the rewards you receive in life.
#10: First Outcome Framing
What results are you likely to get if you hang onto the beliefs that mistakes mean that people wonāt love you, and getting things wrong leads to punishment? Well, you wonāt take many risks, and will live a small, unfulfilled ālife of quiet desperationā. Is that really what you want?
#11: Outcome Of Outcome Framing
If you keep avoiding failure youāll become totally risk-averse and miss out on all the excitement that life has to offer. All because you were too busy focusing on whether other people would love you or punish you for some arbitrary thing youāve done that youāre choosing to call āwrongā or āmistakenā. I donāt see this leading to the life of my dreams; more like the life of your nightmares.
#12: Eternity Framing
Ultimately, if you persist in avoiding taking action out of fear of getting anything wrong, your whole world will implode into a gravitational black whole of suckiness. Youāll end up in a living hell for your sins.
Happy now?
#13: Model of the World Framing
What kind of fucked up inner world are you living in there anyway? One where peopleās love and approval depends on whether we get everything right or not, and where any little mistake, no matter how minor, is met with cruel and unusual punishment. Yikes. The world youāve created for yourself in your head isnāt one Iād want to live in. Get me out of here.
#14: Criteria and Values Framing
Itās not much fun to think that other peopleās love depends on you being perfect, is it? Or that youāll be punished for getting things wrong; unless weāre talking some kind of kinky business here. Nor is it consistent with the esteemed value of unconditional love. If you want to have fun in life, perhaps itās time to forget about these limiting beliefs altogether.
#15: Allness or Universality Framing
Is it really true that all people wonāt love you if you make any mistakes? I think not. Surely there are people out there who will love you regardless. Maybe even in your family, if youād lighten up for long enough to give them a chance. And you havenāt always been punished for getting things wrong.
#16: Necessity Framing
Is this whole mistake/wrong/unloved/punishment thing really necessary?
I want to go play music now; itās more fun.
#17: Identity Framing
Making mistakes and getting things wrong doesnāt really alter who you are. Whether other people love you or not doesnāt alter who you are either. Some people love you because of who you are, and others love you in spite of it. Your lovability isnāt dependent on whether other people choose to invest their emotional energy in you. You are not your behaviours, nor are you the outcome of your actions. You are who you are regardless of any mistakes you make.
#18: Framing All Other Abstractions
Reality does not dictate that mistakes make you unlovable; thatās just an idea you cooked up in your little brain⦠and this crazy idea is the big mistake. Other peopleās response to you isnāt about you. They may withhold love, and they may punish sometimes. Thatās about them, not you. I canāt emphasise enough just how silly it is to continue acting as-if youāll be punished as an adult for getting things wrong. Itās an idea from the past that has no relevant in the present. Itās not real.
#19: Ecology Framing
Does believing that mistakes cause people not to love you, serve you well? Does thinking that you will be punished if you make mistakes make life a party? Do these irrational beliefs from your past create the best of all possible worlds for you to live in now? Are all these rhetorical questions starting to grate on you yet?
#20: Metaphoring Framing Or Storying Framing
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who got into trouble a lot for doing what he enjoyed. The people around him werenāt much fun and didnāt share his sense of humour. They wanted a nice, safe, quiet, boring life. For a long time, he did what they wanted because otherwise they withdrew their love or punished him severely. So he pretended to be the nice little boy he thought they wanted. Then he got very unhappy. In his desperation, he decided not to bother worrying what other people think any more, and to trust his creative instincts. This morning, he wrote this article so you can live in heaven instead of hell too.
#21: Both/And Framing
Sound the alarms! Turn on the sirens. I detect black-and-white thinking. Even if other peopleās love did depend on whether you made mistakes or not, surely thereās a lot you could get away with before theyād withdraw their love completely. Getting little things wrong probably doesnāt attract any punishment at all; itās not like weāre talking about killing someone here, or raping and pillaging.
Thereās plenty of scope to live and have fun within the adult law, even when you get things wrong, without attracting any kind of punishment from the legal system. Push the boundaries and youāll find that even there, the severity of the crime determines the severity of the punishment. Not that Iām suggesting becoming a career criminal; Iām just saying that there are degrees of āgetting things wrongā and the punishment associated.
#22: Pseudo-Word Framing
Who came up with this idea of a āmistakeā anyway? Maybe from time to time you behave in ways that donāt get you a result that youād like, or that wind up giving you an experience you donāt enjoy so much. But is it really a āmistakeā? Itās a made-up concept. There are no mistakes in life really, just learning opportunities. I might find this difficult to swallow when Iām in a lot of emotional pain over something turning out in a way that I didnāt like, such as a girl ditching me for another guy. But perhaps the only real āmistakeā in life is to believe that thereās such a thing as a āmistakeā.
And as for āgetting something wrongā, thatās only a valid concept in the context of mathematics or formal logic. It doesnāt apply to the real world, where there are only actions and consequences; and the consequences often depend on many things outside our control. So you can hardly say you āgot something wrongā just because you didnāt get the result that you would have liked.
#23: Negation Framing
I think you may have got the whole thing around backwards. People hate perfectionist robots. Making mistakes shows humanness and vulnerability. Showing vulnerability is the way to get people to love you. Getting things wrong shows humanness, that other people warm to and feel more safe around. Even my 5th cousin once removed Alan Turingās āimitation gameā required a computer to get things wrong sometimes in order to be considered having human intelligence. People will only truly love you if you make mistakes and get things wrong sometimes.
#24: Possibility and āAs Ifā Framing
What would your life be like if you acted as-if these beliefs werenāt really true, and held no power over you any more? What would be possible if you not only thought that it was OK, but even advantageous to make mistakes, and that this would increase the amount of love in your life? How would you act if you believed that the only way to be rewarded in life was to take massive action and get as many things wrong as possible?
#25: Systemic and Probability Framing
Looking at the big picture, whatās the likelihood that you would lose all sense of love from other people even if you made mistakes constantly? Even if the belief was true, there is no chance that you could ever lose everyoneās love. Even the worst criminals have friends, and nobody can take away the love that you have for yourself; itās always there, even if you canāt feel it.
Tackling the religious punishment-for-sins idea: Any God who condemned a person to eternal suffering for finite sins conducted in a limited lifetime would be unjust; and the bible says that God is loving and just. The notion of a loving God isnāt consistent with the idea of eternal punishment in hell; they couldnāt possibly exist in the same system. You donāt get eternal punishment for getting things wrong in this universe.
#26: Decision Framing
You get to decide what you believe and how you act. Who do you want to be? Someone who holds back from taking action because youāre worried that you might make mistakes (which you certainly will) and lacks love (which you certainly wonāt). Itās your choice whether you judge yourself harshly and use labels like āgetting something wrongā.
Or you could decide to dance like nobodyās watching, like my friend Gavin. Because nobody is.














