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Where The Mind Is Without Fear
ARACHNOPHOBIA is the fear of spiders. Archibutyrophobia is the fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. It gets stranger. Cathisophobia is the fear of sitting, Graphophobia is the fear of writing, and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is, ironically, the fear of long words.
The world can be a confusing place sometimes. How do these people get on with their lives? Are cathisophobic IT professionals and graphophobic journalists oxymorons? If so, do people who have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia know what they are afflicted with? Let's bring it down one notch. You have just entered the job market. You are bereft of any unusual phobias. What is your greatest fear? Interviews? Bosses? Colleagues? Work? All of the above?
Nine times out of ten, the greatest fear is the fear of failure. It is a strange ailment, so strange that it has become irrevocably common. Almost everybody has it. It is the reason why so many of us get cold feet before interviews; why so many managers have minor heart attacks when they are given big projects; why so many bosses get sweaty palms when they have to make big decisions. It happens to everybody. It happens to the manager, it happens to the CEO, it even happens to the shrivelled old lady who sells tea outside your office gate. The only difference is, some people are able to adapt to it better than others.
Why does it happen? It happens mainly because we let it happen. We are afraid of embarrassment - failure carries on its shoulders a lot of unwanted passengers - humiliation, inadequacy, the feeling of being mocked at, a punctured ego, and a broken spirit among other things. And interestingly, it is almost always in a social context - `what will he/she/they say of me?' It wouldn't matter so much if we were the only witnesses to our fallacies, but what makes a blemish unendurable is the fact that the world can see it. We don't want them to, and entire businesses support themselves on this need - liposuction treatments, rhinoplasty, weight-loss pills - it is a billion-dollar industry. It is this same need that causes a fear of failure. We want to hide our blemishes. If by chance we were to get rejected at interviews, we'd rather nobody knew but us. And what transpires is that the interview itself becomes a cause for consternation. Part of this is also due to the fear of the unknown. Some of us like surprises, some of us don't. But none of us, or at least most of us, like knowing that a surprise is coming and not knowing what that surprise is. It is human nature.
And it is also, unfortunately, only the tip of the iceberg. The bad news is, getting out of this quagmire is equally difficult. (a) It demands a superhuman control over your nerves. (b) It requires cartloads of determination and grit; and worst of all; (c) It requires that you keep a cool head, think about the whole thing objectively and stop blowing things out of proportion. That, as you would well know, is a really hard thing to do - whether you are being interviewed for a job by a panel of five steely-faced company executives or addressing an unruly mob of two hundred as a first-time public speaker. You are apprehensive about every word you say (or stammer) and get thrown off by the smallest things.
The best way to go about it is to follow the four-step method:
Take a deep breath; tell yourself that consequences are immaterial and that your only concern is to give it your best shot.
Prepare, review and revise: Everything. Get in control of your material. Go over the pros and cons. If you are preparing for a job interview, rehearse what you are going to say and what might be asked of you. If you have been handed an important task, go over all the facts before you make decisions.
Visualise how you are going to do it to the minutest detail - conceive the entire episode from the start to the end. This will do two things - it will help you be complete in your preparation, and it will relax your apprehensions. Do a dry run if you can.
Go for it: Once you are all set, steel your nerves one last time. Stop thinking about consequences, and do what you have planned to do.
That is about all there is to it. Of course, people being people, have mindsets that are completely different from each other. What works for some will not work for others. But remember, the only way to cure a fear or a phobia is by getting the subject in close proximity with his object of fear. The fear disappears once you get used to it. Try it - for most part it works.
PETER THUTHURI
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