Fighting The Fear Of Failure

From you handle I assume you write. If you feel you have issues with failing, maybe try a creative endeavour you have no skill in, at all.

For me it was doing stuff with clay. I knew absolutely nothing about the material. That means, whatever happens, there is no real failed state.

Can be freeing. Cos I think you fear failure only in things where you hold onto the idea of expecting to be good enough.

Find something you are bronze league level bad at.

 

Why does it have to be framed as "failure?" That's an awfully heavy label to bring on oneself. Why can't it be "my imperfections showing themselves through the learning process?"

For years and years, I thought "wouldn't it be great to learn the guitar someday?" I had fantasies of being able to pick up a guitar off my wall and strum out my favorite hits from the 80's and 90's ... to say nothing of the way a guitar just seems to make women swoon. But it was always a "someday" idea. Finally I just realized that eventually, "someday" was going to become "never" unless I pulled the trigger. So I signed up for weekly lessons, and I've been taking weekly lessons for six years now.

One of the best parts of learning guitar is that I'm a perfectionist--so I knew it would be good for me to really suck at something for a while, and to train myself to see 'failure' not as FAILURE, but as a natural part of the growth and learning process. When a child draws a rudimentary picture, we don't criticize them for not creating a Rembrandt. We know and expect them to be inexperienced and not very skilled at first. Why do we refuse ourselves that same grace?

Is there anything in life you've wanted to learn for a long time, but haven't gotten around to? Maybe this is the time to pick it up and enjoy the growth process of making mistakes and working through them.

 

perfectionist thing, too. the funny variant that never starts, cos it wouldn't be good enough, anyways.

das me. and it escaped me for years, that I might be a perfectionist, cos I pictured em as overstrung overachievers with no chill.
took some exposure to people with the same issue class to pick up it.

embrace the suck. and pay close attention with your tendency to expect too much. cos you can also expect too much ability to embrace the suck, then being annoyed.

see, its a fickle game. hence the proposal of trying something safe, where you have no chance of having cultivated any airs of grandeur like bigness. :3

 

But, inadequate compared to what? To who?

There's been a lot of writing done recently about what sets apart elite athletes from the rest of the field (and I mean the top of the top--your Michael Jordans, Tiger Woods, Tom Bradys, etc). Olympic-level shooter Lanny Bassham wrote this in his book, "With Winning In Mind" (highly recommended btw):

"In my more than twenty-five years in competition, I have been both a participant and a winner. I can tell you it is much more satisfying to win. I think everyone knows that. A fact that is not so widely known is that ninety-five percent of all winning is accomplished by only five percent of the participants.

It is my observation, after competing against and teaching the world's best, that the primary thing that separates the winners from the others is the way they think."
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His entire book then goes into how the top winners tend to think--and it largely comes down to focusing on the process, not the result. They learn to fall in love with the process of training, practice, and growth--the winning comes as a result of loving the process and making it the priority.

It seems so obvious, but it's just doesn't come very naturally to us, because like you said, we've been conditioned for instant gratification. But who's more likely to become a rock guitarist? The guy who daydreams for 30 minutes a day about shredding in front of 20,000 fans, or the guy who practices his technique for 30 minutes a day?

The beautiful thing is we can start working toward literally any goal we have--and achieve them--to the degree that we're willing to focus on process and growth.

 

Lots of good content in this thread. Very relevant to my life as well, so cheers people. Will check out the Bassham book, @SuperFan. Thank you for the recommendation.

 

If you're into that kind of stuff, you'll love it. My good friend Jason recommended the book to me, and he's one of the top-ranked handgun competitors in the country.

 

I can really understand this take. Lately I'm feeling true failure is not being able to tackle anything ever again. I guess death? Or immobilization of some sort.

 

I would do the 12 steps the program offers...and find yourself......what inner thought overwhelms you to think of having the fear .......