Actions Speak

media_video_icon_anim_150_wht_14142In a recent blog we explored the subject of learning styles and how a balance of complementary learning styles is needed to get the wheel-of-change turning.

Experience shows that many of us show a relative weakness in the ‘Activist’ quadrant of the cycle.

That implies we are less comfortable with learning-by-doing. Experimenting.

This behaviour is driven by a learned fear.  The fear-of-failure.

So when did we learn this fear?

Typically it is learned during childhood and is reinforced throughout adulthood.

The fear comes not from the failure though  … it comes from the emotional reaction of others to our supposed failure. The emotional backlash of significant others. Parents and parent-like figures such as school teachers.

Children are naturally curious and experimental and fearless.  That is how they learn. They make lots of mistakes – but they learn from them. Walking, talking, tying a shoelace, and so on.  Small mistakes do not created fear. We learn fear from others.

Full-of-fear others.

To an adult who has learned how to do many things it becomes easy to be impatient with the trial-and-error approach of a child … and typically we react in three ways:

1) We say “Don’t do that” when we see our child attempt something in a way we believe will not work or we believe could cause an accident. We teach them our fears.

2) We say “No” when we disagree with an idea or an answer that a child has offered. We discount them by discounting their ideas.

3) We say “I’ll do it” when we see a child try and fail. We discount their ability to learn how to solve problems and we discount our ability to let them.

Our emotional reaction is negative in all three cases and that is what teaches our child the fear of failure.

So they stop trying as hard.

And bit-by-bit they lose their curiosity and their courage.

We have now put them on the path to scepticism and cynicism.  Which is how we were taught.


This fear-of-failure brainwashing continues at school.

But now it is more than just fear of disappointing our parents; now it is fear of failing tests and exams … fear of the negative emotional backlash from peers, teachers and parents.

Some give up: they flee.  Others become competitive: they fight.

Neither strategies dissolve the source of the fear though … they just exacerbate it.


So it is rather too common to see very accomplished people paralysed with fear when circumstances dictate that they need to change in some way … to learn a new skill for example … to self-improve maybe.

Their deeply ingrained fear-of-failure surfaces and takes over control – and the fright/flight/fight behaviour is manifest.


So to get to the elusive win-win-win outcomes we want we have to weaken the fear-of-failure reflex … we need to develop a new habit … learning-by-doing.

The trick to this is to focus on things that fall 100% inside our circle of control … the Niggles that rank highest on our Niggle-o-Gram®.

And when we Study the top niggle; and then Plan the change; and then Do what we planned, and then Study effect of our action … then we learn-by-doing.

But not just by doing …. by Studying, Planning, Doing and Studying again.

Actions Speak not just to us but to everyone else too.

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