A family friend asked me what I fear more, failure or success. With a light eye roll I said “of course failure” while my undergraduate-sociology-majored mind silently quipped “success is an illusion.” But then he explained himself: are you afraid of failing or of succeeding and realizing that what you deemed success is not what you wanted? Taking it deeper, what if you succeed and people reject your product, your idea, your results, you – what if you succeed and “they” don’t like you’ve done? What if you succeed and you don’t like what you’ve done? Is that what you’re afraid of?
I’ve spent a bulk of the last 5 years meditating on failure. I listened to podcasts (thank you, Tim Ferriss) where remarkable people spoke openly about their “best failures” and the less-than-stellar stories of their otherwise glorified careers. A common theme I heard is that failures fuel the fires that light the path to purpose. Without failure, a person does not know success, cannot appreciate it, and may not be humbled enough to recognize themselves at “the top” if and when they find themselves there.
I made myself comfortable with the thought “I could totally screw this up” while making my best attempt. Applying to graduate school was one of these efforts; entering a serious relationship was another.
When you succeed, you have to do the next thing better, you have to do something else, something differently than what you prepared for the first goal. Getting into graduate school meant I had to do something meaningful with my degree. Entering a relationship meant, eventually, marriage, kids, family, sacrifice – altogether daunting frontiers of the human experience. The challenge becomes: once you achieve your goal, what do you do with that success? How do you make it matter?
A dream achieved becomes reality. My generation is told “follow your dreams” but I haven’t heard much advice on what to do if or when you get there.
Instead of trying, instead of really going for what we want, we agonize over logistics and make excuses for why today is not the right day to start. (The royal “we” works here two fold: I see it amongst my friends and fellow millennials and I recognize the habit of several different parts of myself to buy into this faulty line of reasoning.) We refuse to take the first step toward something we want because we can imagine all the hypothetical dangers that could block or bury us along the way. Maybe we’re just straight up too busy. However, in my limited experience, I find that the dangers you dream up are usually never as bad as what actually occurs, and if the unexpected is damaging short of death, you can adapt, overcome it, and use the lessons learned to fortify your spirit. And if you die doing what you love or fighting for something you believe in, remember that you’ll die either way. Why not take risks for reality rather than preserve your energy for protection against something that may never happen at all?
Hot take: Anticipation is the flesh-eating virus of reality. Action is the antidote. Reflection is the antidote’s vessel.
I wonder if instead of “follow your dreams” we told ourselves to “follow your fears.” Besides death, what scares you? What levels of achievement make you nervous to imagine, what makes your mind ping to all the reasons why you shouldn’t or couldn’t do that thing?
Success is what you make it, how you define it. I assumed I was afraid of failure, but my family friend challenged that assumption and made me reconsider. Maybe I was afraid less of failure and more of succeeding in something I didn’t want or reaching a threshold and realizing that the game wasn’t over, that greater challenges awaited just beyond the finish line. If I play someone else’s game and fail, is the failure mine or can I blame it on the system’s game instead? If I make my own rules, outline my own metrics of success, then succeed and still find myself discontent, then what was it all for?
I don’t have the answers, but I wonder if it partially comes down to this: adaptive forgiveness of the self. If you change your mind about a past belief or you bust through the finish line only to see your goal has shifted to the horizon ahead, forgive yourself for inaccurately predicting what you wanted, what you claimed. Rinse off the best lessons of your effort and continue forward, leaving behind what does not serve your journey onward.
The fear of success is, to my mind, the fear of disappointing yourself and others at the expense of all that you earned and received. Of realizing that you weren’t good enough to make even yourself happy, so how could you expect anyone or anything else to satisfy you? Perhaps adaptive forgiveness is necessary but not sufficient for curing the paralysis of fear. Allow yourself the grace to change your mind, change direction, and change your life by doing the thing you fear most.
Postscript: One of my favorite moments in J. R. R. Tolkien’s work takes place during The Hobbit. In The Hobbit, Bilbo is elected to investigate the lair of the evil dragon Smaug. Bilbo wears the Ring which makes him invisible, thus making him the most protected in case Smaug was indeed home. As he walks toward the lair, he hears Smaug breathing. He does not see him, but the heavy breathing confirms the presence of the deadly beast. All the fears of death and legend collide in Bilbo’s mind, and he pauses. After a moment, he decides to continue on his path, to investigate the lair, to do what he came there to do. Tolkien writes that of all of Bilbo’s daring adventures and acts of courage in Middle Earth (of which there are many), this was the bravest thing he ever did, to continue on in the face of all he feared. Bilbo did not know what would happen or if he would survive, but it seems he knew he had to try, no matter the fear.
Musical Inspiration: Amanda Palmer’s In My Mind (Spotify, Apple Music)
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