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Atychi-what? Overcoming Atychiphobia
Over the years, dozens of professional advocate wannabes have talked to me about fear, including Fear of failure Fear of doing the wrong thing for a client Fear of failure Fear of losing their savings Fear of failure Fear of making a mistake in their work Fear of failure Fear of standing up to authority Fear of failure If your fears stand in the way of your success, then you have only two choices: You can either give up and decide not to move forward with your dream of becoming a successful, professional, independent advocate. Or … you can work to overcome them. Because…. Atychiphobia is the word for a persistent fear of failure. In the past, I’ve also described it as the paralysis of analysis – the idea that you can’t move forward because your analysis of what might happen is failure. If you are in the “give up” group then don’t bother reading the rest of this post. This post is written for those who are brave enough to face their fears; those who know their advocacy is vital to the patients they will help, who dream of helping people professionally to improve their health care and cost outcomes, and is therefore worth the effort to overcome their fears. I hope that means YOU! If you are fearful of any aspect of starting and growing a professional advocacy or care management practice, then it stems from only one thing: the inability to control an outcome. Pause. Think about that. Repeat: Fear stems from feeling as if you cannot control an outcome. What I’m not going to do here is psychotherapy. We’re not going to figure out WHY you are afraid. Instead, what I am going to do is give you a different way to look at your fears, and I’m going to suggest to you that YOU can control how you think about them. Therefore YOU can face your fears head-on – and overcome them. Let’s begin with one of those fears at the top of this post: the fear of losing one’s savings. Let’s break it down:…