Fearless

 I usually have thoughts that I get after pickleball. We started playing pickleball with a group of friends and as we were playing with a few folks, I realized that I was becoming a bit too self conscious about the way I was hitting the ball. I was worried if the ball goes out, I was worried if the ball goes towards the net. But well, as things started, I also think that my body was not warmed up during teh time. But once I started hitting one shot and it went out, we were pretty much okay. We were like okay, that can be out, but we need to be okay with hitting that shot out. Sometimes we might also get a point through that. I removed my fear of failure by actually failing. That brought me to the conclusion that in order to win either in pickleball and in life, we need to remove our fear of failure. The voice inside our head that tells us we are not good enough. You know what you are already good enough. The fact that you learned to walk and crawl by yourself through the simple process of trial and error. That's the way you will learn other things in life too. But you have to be aware about this. It might be hard to always understand this, but fear of failure kills many dreams than the real world. So what is this fear of failure? And does failure really exist or is it just in mind?

Well, when we lose a game, that's failure to us. When we lose a job, that's failure to us. When we try something and lose out on anything whether that's our desired woman, our desired man, anyone, that to me introduces feelings of hurt and a fear of failure. So well, where do we need to go now. We need to play our game without any fear of failures or inadequacy. Pickleball or life, we have to play ourselves without the fear that we will fail in anything. We can fail, there's all the possibility that we might, but you know what, we will learn how to play without the fear of losing. Anything that we have and we are afraid to lose it, that to me is fear of failure. Fear is quite an interesting term right. Imagine we just played like a rally, we would not really worry too much about the scores. Let's just play an actual game as if we are rallying. That's how we will really enjoy playing the game. Fear of failure is usually when we are attached to a particular outcome. When we want certain things to be go our way. However, in reality life does not happen to be like that. We will not certain things our way, not once but most of the time. So well, we need to be playing the game according to that. We should not be afraid to fail. 

So what's the mindset shift we need? In order to be okay of failing, we have to accept that failing is not failing. We will learn from it. We learn from defeats more than we learn from victories. It requires pain for us as humans to learn. Remember how we learned to walk as a child, we were not afraid that we will fall down. We were rather afraid that what if we don't get up. It's not about falling down, but its never getting up.... the dialogue from the movie Rockie right. But anyways there are many more things to look up to and look forward to. When you lose, you learn. You keep learning when you keep losing? No, you learn when you give it all and still lose. So well, there's no thing like fear, there's only one thing and that's learning. Rather do the thing that you fear the most. There are so many things I also fear, do that thing. It's only through the confrontation of the fear that we live. We will need to travel to different places and live. For example, because of one reason or the other we should not stop ourselves from living a good life. A good life is a life that's lived without fear with our head held high. But that's all the observation so far that I have. We need to eliminate fear out of the system. Fear comes as a result of external pressures. When we are pressured to win, or when our identity is threatened that we lost a game, that's where the fear comes. What if we never attached our identity to game. What if we played the game for the fun of playing. What if we played with the idea that we attack them as much as possible. 

But well, where does the mindset shift really happen? Or you might ask how does it happen. I believe affirmations are really good at this. You should use the following phrase everyday 10 times once you begin your day, "I am fearless". That's it, if you say that everyday once you wake up in the morning, your body will start to believe it. You will also play fearlessly. The only thing is that you have to be consistent with it. You can't be like, I will say it one day and another day you don't say it. That's not correct. Rather everyday atleast for 30 days. i.e a month. You have to say I am fearless. You have to say this 10 times. So in a month, you will be saying 300 times. For some great people who used affirmations knowingly or unknowingly, Mohammad Ali, the boxer used to say, I am the greatest. Even before he actually became the greatest, he started saying that. Shahrukh Khan used to say, I am the best. He still says, and says the same thing over and over again. If he does not believe that he is the best, how will the world believe. When you wake up in the morning, the only thought in your head should be I am the best. That's how you wake up and tell your mind that you are actually the best. The mind is a stupid instrument, once it knows that he's the best, there's nothing that will stop him from becoming the best. I can give many more practical tips. But let's just start with the mindset. 

Once mindset is done, I will give more tips about how to conquer your fear. But mindset is the first hurdle. You are fearless. It should always be in the present moment. For the next few days just focus on one practical tip. Which is the mindset of a fearless person. You will notice that you will start walking like you are fearless. You will act like you are fearless. This will only reinforce your identity. One thing to remember is that the identity change does take time, consider 2 momths of work for you to see proper results.