Afraid of looking stupid? Why it's good to be wrong sometimes

 

    The fear of looking stupid is familiar to everyone, and usually begins in childhood. Unfortunately, this fear is not as harmless as it may seem.

Often the fear of looking stupid affects career, self-development, and even relations with colleagues.

Fear is expressed in the fear of asking a question and clarifying an unclear situation. Surprisingly, when we were children we were not afraid to ask about incomprehensible and interesting things. Because of our fears, we miss out on many opportunities, such as career advancement or gaining new knowledge.

Do you often ask a question in a training session when you don't understand something, or in a meeting to correct a speaker's mistake?

In addition to the fear of looking stupid, another fear can rule us - success does not forgive mistakes.

It often seems that as soon as you show weakness or ignorance at work, your colleagues will immediately pounce and tear you apart like piranhas that smell blood. In fact, this is not the case at all, and deep down inside we know it.

How to overcome the fear of looking stupid:

1. Stop being afraid to step out of your comfort zone.

But first, before we even begin to leave it, we must reconsider our understanding of it.

Let's imagine a situation or problem that causes us to fear looking silly-that would be our comfort zone. Now imagine it with a warm wool sweater in which it is so cozy to sit on a frosty winter evening. Now imagine being in that same sweater, but already under the scorching summer sun. With each passing minute it gets hotter, the sweater gets more and more soaked with sweat, gets heavier, and begins to stick to the body.

This is what the comfort zone looks like. At first it's warm and cozy, but soon we outgrow it and it becomes cramped and uncomfortable.

2. recognize fears and eliminate them.

Take stickers and write one situation on each of them in which there is a fear of appearing stupid. Situations like being afraid to ask a colleague for help or to ask an incomprehensible question in a seminar are likely to arise here. It is important to record all situations, no matter how silly they may seem - no one will see them.

Now carefully review all the resulting notes, and then destroy them - tear them up, burn them, or bury them. It's time to get out of the limiting comfort zone, say goodbye to it and to the fears that keep you from moving forward!

This advice may seem too simple and superficial, but unfortunately, the fear of appearing stupid is embedded in our subconscious and keeps us from achieving more every day.

If you, like me, can't break out of your comfort zone, it can take quite a while to transform. The key is to keep in mind everything you can accomplish by getting rid of this fear and not stop when difficulties arise.

What does the research say?

In one experiment, the social psychologist E. Aronson showed 4 groups a recording of an interview with the same person (a fake actor) and measured the level of sympathy for him. During the interview, details of the person's biography, his scientific achievements were clarified, and he was also asked a number of questions on general erudition.

For Group 1, the actor played the role of a very "competent" person - 82% of his answers were correct, he did well in school, etc. For Group 2, he answered 30% correctly, said he didn't learn much in school, and held a lower position than in the first set of questions.

Groups 3 and 4 received identical information to 1 and 2, except that at the end of the interview the interviewee spilled a cup of coffee on himself and exclaimed at the same time: "Oh my God, I spilled my new suit. "

Who do you think they liked the most?

The highest level of liking was recorded in group 3 when the conditionally "competent" person made some kind of mistake - spilling coffee on himself. It was higher than in group 1, where the actor played a perfect picture. But the spilled cup did not play into the hands of the conditionally "less competent" person: the level of sympathy was slightly lower in Group 4 compared to Group 3.

That is, although we tend to sympathize with socially approved qualities in a person, too strong an expression of positive qualities in a person reduces sympathy for him.

People are more accepting and sympathetic to the "living and imperfect" picture.

Perfectionism, unacceptability of mistakes and exaggerated demands on oneself rather hinder than help to make a good impression.