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What's Stopping You?: Why Smart People Don't Always Reach Their Potential and How You Can by Robert Kelsey (view source)
Revision as of 14:38, 19 May 2012
, 14:38, 19 May 2012no edit summary
I always thought that people with a fear of failure were those I thought of as risk-averse, who ventured nothing so as to remain secure, but this is far from the truth. Kelsey cites the example of the game of hoopla. You can go for the targets closest to you - and this is what you might expect from those with a high fear of failure - or you can go for the target furthest away. It's not unusual to find that this is what high-FF people do. You see, it's not really a failure, is it, if no one expected that you would succeed? People with a high fear of failure are often the ones who take inappropriate risks. This was a eureka moment for me and I looked as quite few people in a new light.
I'm not going to precis the book as you really do need to read it yourself, but it looks at why people are they the way that they are, how they can set goals to move themselves into a more positive situation and how they bring the improvement about. It's positive whilst keeping its feet on the ground and thought-provoking. There are thoughts and quotes from ''a lot'' of self-help books but Kelsey hasn't swallowed the content unquestioningly ready to regurgitate it on cue. He's prepared to take the best of it (as for instance with neuro linguistic programming) without feeling that he has to sign up to the movement.
I thought that the book wouldn't have a lot of application for me, but did you see what I did in the first paragraph? I've ''done better than I deserved'' and I'm ''not looking to move mountains''. I'm building in reasons or excuses to fail. It's also made me rethink the way that I deal with other people (well, OK, it's an ongoing process...) but it's definitely a book to make you think and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.