By definition, fear is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. However it should be perceived as a motivation to accomplish new challenges. In fact, students should be encouraged to let fear of failure become an opportunity to succeed. Such is the success experience of Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention was the light bulb, accomplishing his final goal after 1,000 tries. “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times? ” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison responded.
The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps. ” As Thomas Edison encourages, failure does not really exist, “failure” is just the process of success, the step by step we have to make to get where we want to be which certainly can take us longer but, it will be worth the knowledge you will acquire. In other words, when we fear failure, we challenge ourselves to do better, to be patient and to let ourselves grow as we learn from each step and mistakes throughout the process of success Not to mention, recent studies have shown fear can be manipulated to our convenience by different methods.
However, many people might say fear is a feeling we can’t take control of, it could only become our worst enemy if we don’t know how to overcome it the right way. In effect, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health & Well-Being demonstrated on the article “Facing the fear of failure: A qualitative study of client experiences in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program for university students with academic evaluation anxiety. ” that they studied 29 university students in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program for academic evaluation anxiety.
Where two patterns related to the fear of failure were found: moving from fear to curiosity in academic learning, and feeling more self-acceptance when facing difficult situations. What the authors of this article want to prove is that two patterns were identified. The first one, university students, students who usually are stressed out, after being under the 8 mindfulness-based stress reduction program, a program that looks forward to help students with stress problems, testified that they went from experiencing fear to fail to curiosity in academic learning.
As one of the students said, he wanted to turn around the situation and instead of just keeping the fear of failing a class and dropping his grades to himself, he looked for new methods and ways of learning and doing assignments, he started feeling more curiosity for other options he could try. For example, other students said she would always have “catastrophic thoughts” and would always get lost in the little details. But this time, these students looked at the bigger picture and focused on the material they had in front of them to get the best out of that study session or assignment they were working on.
The fear went from the worst enemy holding them back” to a motivation to do better, like a fresh “new start”, as they said because they experienced curiosity, they wanted to see, try, experience new methods of achieving their school projects. The second pattern found in this 8 week mindfulness-based stress reduction program for academic anxiety was, feeling of more self-acceptance when facing difficult moments. In fact, students argued that they felt more confidents of themselves after being afraid of not completing their work correctly. 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program for academic evaluation anxiety.
Some participants described being less afraid of their own feelings” and instead took care of themselves during exams periods and stressful days. In addition, a students claimed she felt more confident about herself when going to her class after this 8 week treatment and was more positive thinking and enthusiastic than what she was before. Other students said they were so used to think the worst would always happen to them, lack of self-care made them make worst at school because they didn’t feel good about they were doing at school but didn’t do nothing to change the situation because the fear of making it worst.
As shown before, fear can be manipulated by having little stress treatments that make students think about what is that thing that they fear the most and how can they improve. As the 29 universities students did, many other college students could go from fearing the worst to achieving their goals. It has been proved that it is a process they will have to go through in order to discover what other ways of studying, writing essays, dealing with professors and other students, are out there that they haven’t tried yet because the fear of failing again.
Indeed, students already went from experiencing fear to fail to curiosity in academic learning and also improved the feeling of more self-acceptance when facing difficult moments by manipulating their fear through a stress treatment process of 8 weeks. In the the other hand, the article “ Human fear acquisition deficits in relation to genetic variants of the corticotrophin-releasing hormone receptor 1 and the serotonin transporter – revisited” by Genes, Brain & Behavior, insists a genetic polymorphism in the human corticotrophin-releasing hormone receptor 1 is associated with reduced fear-conditioned responses to a threat cue.
To reproduce their previous discoveries, they conducted a replication study in 224 healthy medication-free people using the same cue and context virtual reality fear-conditioning procedure as in study by Heitland et al. (2013). In the replication study genetic polymorphism human corticotrophin-releasing hormone receptor 1 G-allele carriers showed reduced fear responses compared with C/C homozygotes. It’s very obvious this supports that the human corticotrophin-releasing hormone “plays a role in the acquisition of fears”.
What the authors of this articles are proving in this article is that while some people have to go through a 8 week stress treatment process to overcome fear and manipulate it to do better at school and in real life, other people can simply improve the feeling of fear because of the releasing hormone corticotrophin that can make people feel less afraid during stressful situations. They recently showed that a genetic polymorphism (rs878886) in the human corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) is associated with reduced fear-conditioned responses to a threat cue.
This can make anyone think these are good news but the truth is that this hormone can make you feel generalized anxiety. This study was duplicated in healthy people which means they could try a treatment for anxiety s they naturally overcome their fears. In contrast, I have experienced the fear of not graduating from high school about two years ago. For many reasons I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my assignments because the fear of failing my classes was so stressful that I would cry at night instead of working on my math homework and just do things that made everything worse than what it was at the beginning of everything.
I had a lot of pressure on me when I was told I only had 1 year and a half to get all my credits I needed to graduate and to take 7 English classes. I decided I would stop blaming my mom for everything I was going through and decided to do it for myself. I remember I took as many classes I could during summer and during the regular school year. My fear of not accomplishing one of my dreams made it possible. Even though I didn’t feel capable of accomplishing my goal at the beginning of everything, I motivated myself by asking for help and trying new methods of doing my homework, and studying.
Just like the first article has shown, fear can be turned into curiosity and once you are there, you feel better about yourself. Once I started discovering how to organize my time, my schedule on the weekends and even my notebooks and binders (because during my senior year I took 4 English classes), I started feeling proud of who I was becoming. Back then, I remember my GPA looked something like this:“4. 5837534343 “. During my senior year that is how my every two weeks student report would look like. I was so scared of not graduating, I was so afraid of not making my dream real that I did the best of me and I made it.
When I graduated high school I knew college would be hard for me because of my poor English, but then I realized that I what I feared the most was not to try. I can truly say I like that feeling of being afraid at any time of my life. It makes me feel like if someone wants me to prove them wrong. At the end of the day I do it for myself and because I want to accomplish my goals even though it is a process I go through in order to get to the point where I feel confident of what I am doing especially when it comes to school tasks.
However, it is often said that students are most likely to procrastinate and to experience fear to failure that most of the time stops them from achieving complex tasks. Author Rollin Ramsaran works at the Emmanuel Christian Seminary. Ramsaran argues educators should focus on students’ success by creating a learning environment at their classroom. The author reviews the book “Building Classroom Success: Eliminating Academic Fear and Failure” by dividing it into four sections that explain the four steps on how to build classroom success.
Ramsaran is helpful in explaining the four steps on how to build a classroom environment that will increase students’ success. examines the relationship between fear and failure and the psychological concept we have of “self-esteem. ” Young people, speecially teenegares and young adults are very motivated to protect their self-esteem and this can lead them to create many patterns of negativity, pessimism and perfectionism, and fear and avoidance of success . For example, fear of failure can provoke a student to underplay her or his capability, just because they don’t want others to see them failing.
The authors imposes that educators must keep as a goal: the elimination academic fear and failure. Educators complain their only mission is to educate and teach the students specific courses and lessons. But really as Martin claims, educator must show students that failure and poor performance is helpful in identifying and correcting weaknesses; secondly, students should be encouraged by their educators at all times to measure personal improvement; finally, they must help students to see their self-worth not on performance and outcome, but instead on their courage, participation, and effort.
These are very controversial assigned “missions” to educators at any level of education, whether it’s a middle school class, at a 4 years university or even at a kindergarten school because most teachers focus on lecturing, and they don’t focus on making sure their students are learning a life lesson as well.
It is important to think on young people who procrastinate and quit before even trying for a second time, not only to think on these students but also on the parents of them. Parents should stop complaining about their kids dropping out of school or losing the interest on school and instead make sure their kids are attending to a class where they are getting that motivation that makes them understand they would have to fail many times after actually succeeding.
