
2020-3-NL02-KA205-003289, Overcoming Fear of Failure
The project aims to solve the most significant issues that prevent young people from starting any endeavour – fear of failure, which has roots in shame culture. The project will equip youth workers, leaders and young adults with methods, tools, and guidance to be able to plan their future and apply it into reality without fear of failure.
In a morally supported culture, called a guilt culture, “you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture, you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honours or excludes you. In the shame culture, social exclusion makes people feel they are bad”.(Crouch 2016, The shame culture – https://bit.ly/3cJZuB4 )
The omnipresence of social media has created a new sort of shame culture, since it’s a world of constant display and observation, where success equals inclusion and acceptance.
Our internal research found interesting facts in the study “The effect of You Can Do It! Education in six schools on student perceptions of wellbeing, teaching, learning and relationships”, where researchers have developed and implemented a positive psychology program through a “Train the trainer” methods. The results indicated an overall positive effect on students’ attitudes and self-perceptions of different aspects of their wellbeing, fostering motivation and confidence.
Thus, we considered that similar methodologies could be applied within our project, by developing and implementing a Train the trainer program for youth workers to enable them to support young people in overcoming fear of failure, and defining their path with a positive mindset.
With the project, we aim to prevent/mitigate the feeling of fear regarding the chances of failing any endeavors, through the use of positive psychology. We will foster the learning and implementation of positive psychology to change the view on mistakes in one’s life, helping to cope with the effects of failure.
Positive psychology is a scientific study on what makes people thrive and focuses on behaviours that can lead to a more optimized frame of mind to lead to more practical actions, much like cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Compared to CBT, positive psychology focuses more on what makes already-functional; it focuses on strengths instead of weaknesses (Martin Sellingman, Father of modern positive psychology – https://bit.ly/PositivePsychologyDef ). Positivity improves life, working place, family and society as a whole.
Therefore, our project has a focus on how to handle the problem of preventing fear of failure with a universal approach which can be useful for young adults and youth workers, that will be our target group.
The needs of the target groups have been determined through a survey specially developed for collecting information for the needs of the project and have been conducted in each participating country. The consolidated results from it are the needs that the consortium sets as the needs that the project should fulfil, and the skills and knowledge that will be acquired / developed by the target group:
Youth Workers:
- Increase their understanding of fear of failure and its effect on young people
- Successfully handling difficult situations in correlation with fear of failure
- Learning how to engage with youth regarding this topic
- New teaching methodologies (problem-based learning)
Young adults (18+):
- Realizing the consequences of fear of failure by working on positive thinking
- Gaining a new perspective and insight when it comes to possible outcomes that may occur when facing fear of failure online.
- Knowing how to deal with fear of failure after going through specifically designed courses and educational workshops, thus, helping to prevent it and its spread on others.
The project will innovate and create a new competence framework and educational programs for youth workers, preparing them for exactly what they need when supporting and motivating young people. In addition, we will focus on problem-based training for youth workers and lessons for young adults that will be further explained in detail.
The shame culture and successful uprising is a complex global problem that requires companies, youth workers and NGOs from different countries to work together to make our societies more capable and inclusive.
The project is inherently transnational for purposes of analysing data differences regarding young people and youth work of the listed countries. The educational material will be prepared based on international expertise of mixed partnership.
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