I hold a massive fear of failure in my heart. A fear which only seems to exist half the time and begins to show only when I forget it's existence. The topic of this post is a subject I'm actively trying to work through, which makes it all the more special and painful to me. I'd like to be open about my persistent and evil fears with you all. I want use this post to share in this vulnerability for the sake of growing together. I'm tired of being a victim to my own fear, it hurts.
Fear is often synonymous with pain. Fear is evil. hurtful, and negative. The wonderfully painful thing about fear is being all those things and safe. Fear is terrifyingly safe, because one is able to hide away deep in it's shadow. Atychiphobia, the irrational and persistent fear of failure has been a constant in my life since I first discovered a word to label my pain. Whether it be self diagnosed or not, we'll say for the sake of argument I'm only kind of afraid to fail. However, because this fear exists, I remain sheltered and afraid of trying new things. I've become set in my ways and built up safety nets to fall back into, considerably irresponsible behavior. This pain is irresponsible for two reasons, the first being knowing this pain still exists and being too afraid to push through the massive failure. Instead I choose to inch through the small failures in between, a technically more difficult approach. The second being I knowingly allow this pain to control my decisions and actions towards my greater goals.
The reason our fears persist is because of the difficulty it takes to work through them. They are difficult, scary, and painful to overcome. It becomes easy for us to make those fears something bigger than they are, because we don't quite understand how quickly they can snowball into a problem. The point of working through these fears is breaking down the snowball. Chipping away at those problems and stumbling incredibly hard along the way. We tend to find frustration in not being able to chip away at this snowball. Fear will drive us to the extreme or further away from the solution when we do fail. In those scenarios it seems impossible to understand how to approach our fears. If the highs are massive and the lows are depressingly low. The solution like most posted about in this blog, is easier said than done. The path starts with one difficult to question. Why are you afraid?
Truly conquering failure comes from starting at the bottom floor and working your way up. Allow fear into your life and attempt to understand why this fear is controlling you. Fear exists because our minds begin to distort things in evil ways. Causing fear to become a physical embodiment of pain and hatred. It becomes a legitimate shadow lurking behind us, one we are too afraid to face. Face your fears is listed as a popular approach because you more often than not need to turn around and look at your fear directly. You need to experience the fear of fear. To give a temporary halt, don't rush in headfirst. You aren't forced into conquering your fears in a day and you certainly don't need to understand them immediately, even if you are forcing yourself too. In addition to sharing these thoughts with you, this post is written as a reminder to me. If I can take the steps towards living in the unknown, it could be correct for you to follow my approach. If only for a moment, live with and embrace the fear. Attempt to understand why it's weighing you down, only then will you be able to work through it.
Ask yourself why you're afraid and WashYourAss
- Noble
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