What's Stopping You? By Robert Kelsey

HERTFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND, June 09, 2011

What's Stopping You? By Robert Kelsey

Published 8th May 2011 by Capstone/Wiley in paperback, GBP12.99

"This personal, witty and insightful book teaches us about the fears that drive failure as well as self-awareness which will help to navigate it. The excellent point relating to this book is that it is both philosophical with regards the nature of fear as well as its affect on achievement, and practical. For people who can be paralysed with a anxiety about failure, it provides a way through" Luke Johnson, serial entrepreneur, Chairman of the RSA and Financial Times columnist.

Think you're a High-AM or maybe a High-FF? Have you got high levels of "achievement motivation" - meaning you place challenging but achievable goals and view failure as a temporary setback that is overcome with minor adjustments within your grasp? Or have high "fear of failure" - which means, terrified of public humiliation, you set goals that are either easily within their capabilities or way beyond them (assuming failure is going to be kindly judged)? Do you also judge any setback as final confirmation of your innate inabilities?

According to Robert Kelsey the High-AM/High-FF divide features a significant influence on our likelihood of success both in our career and private life. It's not our abilities, or lack of them, that could limit our progress, it's our fears, and particularly our anxiety about failure. What's more, while thousands of people have problems with fear of failure, many are unaware they've this recognised mental condition, despite its impact on their behaviour.

The experiments detailed within What's Stopping You? are well-known among psychologists and academics, yet have failed to make it into the vast majority of self-help books, which Kelsey both criticises for over-promising and encouraging the High-FF towards inappropriate goal-setting (potentially based on their avoidance of challenging but achievable objectives) and "ransacks" for helpful descriptions and methodologies.

What's important, as per What's Stopping You? is that the High-FF accepts who they really are and therefore their assumptions might be faulty, allowing a reorientation towards the future and so on setting strong, appropriate goals that aren't fuelled by modern influences or curtailed due to personal fears.

Small but practical steps are plotted, geared towards helping High-FFs make progress. Areas including planning, tactical-execution and task efficiency will also be covered just like High-FF concerns including judgement, idea-generation and - most importantly for the High-FF - dealing with people.

"What's Stopping You? delivers three core needs to those that have a very high anxiety about failure" says the author Robert Kelsey. "Firstly, it delivers knowledge of what has happened in our past - of who we are and how we've got here. Secondly, it encourages an acceptance of our condition - that people are who we are. And, most of all, it helps us navigate the barriers which are thrown up by our fears."

"People with a fear of failure desire a map," says Kelsey. "Yet What's Stopping You? isn't a map. High-FFs must draw their unique map. What's Stopping You? offers assistance with how to pull off drawing such a map: in draft, with amendments, fuzzy at the edges, containing a lot of 'here by dragons' elements, but a guide nonetheless. Something they are able to grasp and regard as they cut through the thicket."

For more information, extracts, article requests or an interview with Robert Kelsey please contact Dani Freeman at Midas Public Relations on 020 7361 7866 or email daniel.freeman@midaspr.co.uk

About the author:

Entrepreneur, writer, former City banker and financial journalist Robert Kelsey calls himself a practitioner in failure after having a childhood and early-adulthood punctuated with both academic and career disasters. He read numerous self-help books spanning a 12 year period in an effort to overcome the low self-esteem which had been driving the fears accountable for his failures. Becoming something of a self-help addict, he learned that - while helpful - a good number of the books lacked two vital ingredients: an honesty regarding his condition - especially its changeability - and guidance that took account of the flawed thinking of people with fear of failure. What's Stopping You? is the result.

http://www.robert-kelsey.co.uk/index.php