Ep #189: Fearing Failure

Hi! How are you? And how are you feeling about the progress you’re making with your binge eating? Doing well? Has the start of this year gone as you’d hoped? If so, awesome!

If not and if you haven’t been making the progress you’ve wanted to make, if you keep struggling with the same things over and over, if you keep losing motivation, if you binge eat at all, then you must join me for the next round of The Stop Binge Eating Program and registration is open from now until this Friday March 18^th,, 2022.

Doing this work as a team will make it easier for you to progress more easily and more quickly. I will help you figure out why you keep doing the same things over and over and not only will we come up with a strategy for how you’re going to change it but, make sure you know how to implement that strategy. I will help you stay the course and keep your motivation up. Not only do I help you to stop binge eating in this program but I also help you if you find yourself not doing the work. If you’ve ever started a program and gave up at some point, then having the accountability of this program will be so helpful for you.

I’m going to help you to get over your fear of your binge foods, to feel more comfortable in your body, and to be able to eat the way you want to eat. You’re going to get feedback on what you’re doing so I can help you figure out why it’s not working and how to make it work. And you’re going to get a perspective for your own personal struggles that you won’t get on your own. Just from listening to this podcast you’ve probably had so many perspective shifts and in the program, there will be so many more that directly relate to you.

So much goodness is coming for you in the program. To register now, go to coachkir.com/group. I cannot wait to see you there, help you stop binge eating for good, and watch you transform yourself and your life. It’s going to be amazing!

Okay, now let’s talking about failing, your favorite topic, right?

It’s something that I know so many of you are afraid of.

But have you ever stopped to think about why you’re afraid of it? Why is it so scary?

Because here’s what happening.

You set out to do something and you don’t.

You had an expectation and you didn’t meet it.

You had a goal and you were unsuccessful at achieving it.

That’s failing.

When you only look at it how I just defined it, it doesn’t seem so scary, does it?

But it will when you start making it mean more than that.

You start making it mean something about you as a person.

And when you do that you feel bad and that bad feeling, that’s what you’re fearing.

Not the failure itself but, the feeling you think you’ll feel if you do fail.

Let’s say a person made a plan for how they were going to eat for the day. There were very happy with this plan, it had foods they like, they believed it would fuel them well for the day, they included a joy food that they had been thinking about, and they believed they would be able to follow it. They also believed that they weren’t going to overeat or binge that day.

So they were feeling really good, confident, optimistic, and ready to make progress with their eating.

And then, something happened.

There was an incident at work and they started feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and panicked.

Their mind went right to food, they completely forgot about their plan for the day, and there they were at the vending machine, buying a candy bar. Then they bought another, and another, and snuck some food from the break room too. It all happened so quickly and right after they finished eating, their first thought was, “I’m a failure. I can’t even stick to a plan I want to follow. I’m never going to be able to eat how I want to eat and stop bingeing.”

And how do you think they felt then? Probably terrible – defeated, ashamed, hopeless.

And it’s important to know that they didn’t feel that way because of what they ate. They felt that way because of what they made their eating mean about them.

They ate food and made it mean they’re a failure, they can’t stick to a plan they want to follow, and that they’ll never be able to eat how they want to eat and stop bingeing.

That’s what made them feel so bad.

And here’s how you know it was their thoughts and not eating the food.

This is how it could have gone:

They made their plan, felt really good about it, and then something happened at work. They were feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and panicked and their reaction was to go buy a candy bar without even considering their plan they’d made, and then they ate food after that.

After they finished eating, they realized what they had done.

They felt disappointed for a moment but then, they had compassion for themself. What they did is exactly what they’d been doing for years so it makes sense that that would be their immediate reaction.

And then they got curious and broke down the series of events that led to eating what they ate. They saw that they were avoiding their feelings. They saw that they didn’t take a pause to think about what they were doing.

So now, they’re going to work on allowing themselves to feel their feelings and take pauses before eating.

There might still be a little lingering disappointment but more-so, they feel hopeful and determined about the future.

See what a difference a shift in perspective can make?

They can either fail and feel defeated, ashamed, and hopeless or, feel a little disappointed with more determination and hopefulness.

Both of those options are available to them when they make a mistake, or fail, and they’re available to you as well.

And if you went with the second choice, do you think you’d be so afraid to fail?

What’s so scary about feeling determined and hopeful with a little disappointment?

That could be your experience of failing if you didn’t talk to yourself like a jerk when you fail.

So, if you want to stop fearing failure, and not feel so horrible when you fail, be kinder to yourself when you do fail.

Now, you may feel fear about failing not just with food but, with other areas in your life – your relationship, your career, raising your children.

And I get it, those can have huge consequences.

And with them, doing a reframe of how you’re thinking about it so you don’t feel so awful is going to be a challenge.

Most likely, you’ll feel terrible for some time, even if you do give yourself compassion and figure out what happened. There will probably still be a lot of negative emotions going on.

So here are your two options there.

Be afraid of the emotions or be ready to feel them.

So one option looks like this:

If I lose my job, I’m going to feel awful, my eating is going to go to shit, I’m not going to know what to do, and my life with be a disaster.

And another option looks like this:

If I lose my job, I’m going to feel awful but, I will feel those feelings, get to the other side of them, and as for what I’ll do to make money, I’ll figure it out.

Notice the difference here.

You can fear and worry about the unknown and about feeling feelings or, you can decide that you’ll figure it out, which by the way, you pretty much always do, and you’ll feel the feelings.

That’s what this mostly comes down to. Feelings will happen and if you’re not afraid of feeling them then you’ll be less afraid of them happening and of failing happening.

If there was no self-loathing attached to your failures, you’d be much less afraid of failing and self-loathing is completely optional.

So, you might be wondering why all of this important.

So what if you’re afraid to fail?

Well, if you’re afraid to fail, you won’t try.

You won’t make the plan, you won’t sign up for the program, you won’t get into the relationship, you won’t have kids, you won’t take the job, you won’t make the friend, you won’t do whatever it is that you’re afraid to fail at.

And you’ll miss out on so much.

You’ll miss out on having big things you desire and on having little things here and there that could add up to big things.

Fear can be a huge goal blocker. It can block you from achieving great things if you allow your fear to stop you.

Any goal you have has a risk of failure and if you are so afraid failure that you let the fear stop you, you don’t even give yourself a chance to try and be successful.

So what you end up doing is failing ahead of time.

Instead of risking feeling disappointed, embarrassed, or defeated, you feel those feelings, or something similar, as you live your life without the things you want the most.

You’ll think about what you want that you don’t have, and what you’re too scared to even try and get and that’s not going to feel good to think about.

So instead of letting your fear hold you back, be brave.

No matter what happens, you will get through it, you will figure out what to do next if a fail happens, and no matter what feelings you feel, you can feel them.

If you set out to stop binge eating and you binge, even if you binge for a week, you will figure out how to stop and no matter how you feel, you can feel it.

You might be way more resilient than you give yourself credit for and are probably more capable than you give yourself credit for too.

All of you are capable of feeling and making it through even the worst feelings. And all of you will figure out how to get through it.

So whatever kind of failure you’re afraid of, figure out what feelings you’re afraid to feel if you fail because that’s what you’re truly afraid of.

And know that you can feel them. All of them. And eating won’t make you feel any better.

Go for your dreams, go for your goals, and risk feeling bad if you fail because it’s better than feeling bad about not even trying.

I truly think it’s better to try and fail then to not try at all. At least if you try you’re giving yourself an opportunity to succeed. And you’re not if you just fail ahead of time.

And even if you do fail, that doesn’t have to mean it’s the end. It could mean you’re on your way there and this was just a bump in the road that highlighted something you need to work on.

Look at it however you want to. You always have that choice.

Alright, so I hope you’re feeling a little less fearful about failing and are ready to get to work on whatever you’ve been afraid to do and if that thing you’ve been afraid to do has been signing up for The Stop Binge Eating Program, one of the best parts about it is that I’m going to teach you how to feel those feelings you’ll feel when you fail. I’m going to walk you through it step by step and by the end, you’ll feel so much more comfortable with feeling all the feelings.

And I want you to know too that your fear of failure may not go away completely, I think we all feel it sometimes, I feel it sometimes too, but, let’s stop letting it stop you you from achieving your goals and dreams. You’re going to go for them anyway.

So to remind you, registration closes this Friday March 18^th at 10am ET and you’ll go to coachkir.com/group to sign up. And if you have any questions, email them to info@coachkir.com.

I cannot wait to see you there and to help you with all things binge eating.

Bye bye.