ABOUT ROBERT KELSEY

Robert Kelsey is a financial journalist turned City banker turned entrepreneur. Currently he is the founder and CEO of Moorgate Communications financial PR agency. He is also an author – publishing his first book, The Pursuit of Happiness (a “lad-lit” comedy on his life as an English banker in New York) in 2000.

Yet Robert calls himself a practitioner in failure after a childhood and early adulthood strewn with academic and career disasters. Determined to find an answer, he became a self-help addict – reading scores of books across the self-help genre.

Robert discovered that his problem wasn’t failure but fear of failure. He was a classic High-FF – someone with a high fear of failure – approaching difficult but achievable challenges with a sense of dread regarding the seemingly inevitable failure that awaited him and, therefore, seeking to avoid the challenge altogether: making his inevitable failure self-fulfilling.

Yet, while helpful, the self-help books also promised something they couldn’t deliver: a cure. Working with the London Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy, he discovered that, not only was his condition innate, it led him in totally the wrong direction with respect to goal-setting. Once aware of his condition, however, Robert Kelsey also realized that progress is possible as long as we take account of the fears that drive our insecurities, accept them as part of us, and find a way of navigating these self-constructed mental hurdles. What’s Stopping You? is the result.