Heinz released a series of public ad posters promoting family sized pasta sauce. The ads depict a wedding reception where the Black bride sits in the middle of the table completely overjoyed while eating pasta. To her right sit her white groom’s mother and father. On the left, the groom and what looks like the bride’s Black mother appear. Where is the bride’s father?

It’s now 14 days since I was sent this picture from Vauxhall tube station, and as a Black father with two daughters, I was outraged. This advert only perpetuates racist stereotypes against the Black community. What were Heinz thinking? It’s quite obvious that there are no Black executives in the Heinz marketing team or in their advertising agency.

Atychiphobia is the scientific word for the fear of failure. Atychiphobia is a constant, overwhelming feeling of dread that accompanies the undertaking of projects or pursuit of life goals. We all have different definitions of failure, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values, and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else. Our fears tend to paralyse us, holding us back from taking constructive action in the direction of our dreams and goals. When we are scared, we hesitate, we become indecisive and procrastinate, we make excuses and find reasons to delay. Finally, we feel frustrated when caught in the double knot of “I have to” but “I can’t” or vice-versa.

Please note that when you say, “I can’t”, then I consider it to mean you have a fear of failure. And when you say, “I have to”, it means that you have a fear of rejection.