Have you ever been too afraid to try for an opportunity because you feared that you wouldn't get it? In this talk, you'll learn more about some of the causes of fear of failure, along with clear strategies that you can use to overcome it and advance within your tech career.

1. Overcoming Your Fear of Failure
Olivia Liddell
Learning Technologist at Wiley

2. Key Questions
What is fear of failure?
How can you recognize it?
How can you overcome it?

3. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment

4. Results
Stronger willpower
with the marshmallow
as children
Greater resiliency
and persistence as
adults
Greater resiliency and
persistence as adults

5. Giving Up Sooner
Eating the marshmallow
Allowing fear of failure to
hold you back

6. Choosing to Persist
Waiting for the bigger reward
Making progress and
achieving your goals

7. “…that irrational fear that we
will not succeed.”
TIMOTHY A. PYCHYL,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT CARLETON UNIVERSITY

8. Self-
sabotage
Imposter
Syndrome
Feeling
inadequate
Reluctance
to try new
things
Procrastination

9. The 3 P’s
Perfectionism
Procrastination
Paralysis

10. Possible Outcomes
 Avoiding risk-taking
 Negative impact on group collaborations
 Missing out on opportunities
 Career stagnation

11. “The most concrete thing that neuroscience
tells us is that when the fear system of the
brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-
taking are turned off.”
GREGORY BERNS
PSYCHOLOGIST AND NEUROECONOMIST AT EMORY UNIVERSITY

12. Identify your strengths.

15. Identify your current strengths –
and also begin to develop new ones.

16. Identify your current strengths –
and also begin to develop new ones.
 StrengthsFinder 2.0
 Reflected Best Self Exercise
Identify respondents and ask for feedback
Recognize patterns
Compose your self portrait
Redesign your job

17. Build and rely on a support network.

20. When building new relationships:
 Focus on quality over quantity.
 Seek out mentoring opportunities.
 Offer your strengths as resources to others.

21. Redefine failure and learn from it.

22. Source: https://medium.com/leadership-motivation-and-impact/fixed-v-growth-mindset-902e7d0081b3

23. Learn how to read Arabic in 2 minutes!

24. aa
b

25. Arabic is written and read from
right to left.

26. aab
father

27. baab
door

28. Source: https://medium.com/leadership-motivation-and-impact/fixed-v-growth-mindset-902e7d0081b3

29. 1. Identify your current strengths – and also begin
to develop new ones.
2. Build and rely on a support network.
3. Redefine failure and learn from it.

30. “Let’s go invent tomorrow,
rather than worrying about what
happened yesterday.”
STEVE JOBS

31. Olivia Liddell
olivialiddell
olivia.liddell@gmail.com