"I don't want to fail," "I don't want to look stupid," or "I don't want to make any mistakes."
The problem is that those goals are really common, and left unsaid, they dominate.
Think about how often your goal ... is, "don't screw up!" or "don't make a fool of yourself and say the wrong thing."
The times I'm been the most happy is when I'm not concerned about making mistakes or screwing up.
The times I've been the most unhappy are either when I am afraid of screwing up.
Or when I'm recovering from the aftermath or loss from a mistake that I didn't understand or wasn't expecting.
That last sentence is the killer, and why mistake-fear is so hard to just ignore...
