Fear Of Failure

Today’s got me off, but not as intensely as yesterday. 

I was hurting big time. Life just was a big pile of ‘not worth it’ and I felt like I had nothing behind me, nothing ahead of me, nothing to offer of value insofar as my work. Thus, the answer was not to try, to give in for the day and just vegetate on couch-lock and escape into Netflix. And yet, I couldn’t do that. There was a massive amount of force that kept pushing me to ‘work’ despite not having the enthusiasm or even reason to do so. I felt like I deeply needed to surrender for the day, coil up in my cave and lick my wounds but to do so would be a great failure that would only inflict greater harm upon my wounded soul than would a day of using stimulants to push past the lethargy. And yet, to push hard and to fall short would be just as devastating as surrendering. I was trapped, agitated, and dejected. 

I was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, drinking yerba mate and guayusa, stewing. I typically start my day on yerba alone, no food for a few hours. But, I decided that despite how trapped I felt in regards to my work/rest conundrum, I could at least succeed at making breakfast. I got up, put in my earbuds and turned out a podcast to engage myself with ideas and topics outside of my hard stuck morning neurosis. 

Among my favorite podcasts is Bulletproof Radio. At the beginning of each episode, the host Dave does ‘cool fact of the day’. It just so happened that on this episode the cool fact of the day was that a single self-perceived “failure” can create a negative feedback loop that creates a fear of failure that permeates into one’s life. It can persist for days, even months (even past down through generations). This fear breeds a pre-defeat to all impending choices and potentials, leaving one feeling inadequate and trapped in their own mediocrity, all the while informing behaviors that reinforce that inadequacy by blocking one from showing up to their goals in a successful way.

"Today’s cool of the fact of the day is about the psychological effects of failure. It turns out that failure makes the same goal seem less attainable, it distorts your perceptions of your abilities, it can make you believe that you’re helpless, and just one single failure experience can create an unconscious fear of failure. When you have fear of failure you can sabotage yourself without even knowing it and it’s something that you can transmit to your own kids, or maybe you got from your parents.
The pressure to succeed increases performance anxiety, which causes you to choke.”-Dave Asprey, Bulletproof Radio #371

On this past Saturday, I intended to go to yoga. I have not been to a yoga class in a very long time. It was a new studio and I was feeling all sorts of resistance to going. But I forced myself out of bed, got dressed and drove down to the studio. I was about 10mins early and sat in my car, getting increasingly anxious about it. I debated with myself for a few minutes, trying to convince myself to follow through with the little voice in my head that said 'do it', while also arguing against that little voice with a series of excuses to justify turning back, while also simultaneously mitigating between the two. 

The ultimate deciding factor was that I felt bloated and farty because I left so early I didn’t follow through with my morning BM and so it was “the best choice to just head back”, which I did. 

As soon as I began driving away I noticed feelings of defeat, failure, and self-deprecating anger emerging in my being. This wave of feelings grew and battered me against the shores of my life for the rest of the day and into Sunday. I hadn’t realized that on Monday morning, the burden of that failure was still looking over me, distorting the perception of my abilities, calling me to see failure as an absolute in all potential choices before me. 

By the grace of a higher order of reality, I was granted, in the first 30 seconds of the podcast, a light of perspective that shone through the obtrusive fear of failure that was officiating my sense of self-confidence. Slowly, over the course of breakfast and the rest of Monday, I managed to mutter and self-talk myself back to baseline.

Now on Tuesday, I feel better but a piece of that remains and I continue to place effort in realigning myself back to confidence. (this is a part of the process)

I once heard Peter Sage, self-proclaimed extreme entrepreneur, say that the most important job an entrepreneur has is to protect their self-confidence. These last couple days have certainly been an obtuse example of that, though I face the challenge of protecting that self-confidence on the microlevel every day. I face it when I decide to show up to being a writer, to being a podcast host, to being a public speaker, to being an online artist crowdfunded entrepreneur. I face it anytime when I show up to say 'yes I will take the social, financial, psychological and emotional risks for this because I know its what I need to do for me, and for the world'. 

Some days it's easier than others. Some days it’s like breathing in a moist, vibrant forest. Somedays it’s like breathing underwater. Most days it's somewhere in between, as I do my best not to let my fears block me from unwrapping and sharing my greatest gifts.