The failure is coming, so let it come.
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
This blog is about anxiety and fear of failure, really about failure. I use failure broadly, but it is worst case, pending disaster, the thing you are trying to avoid at all costs. Looming failure. It takes on different forms and shapes for different people, but it is the real life, adult version of a boogie man of sorts. Failure is complicated and so is anxiety. I say anxiety is complicated because for some people it is difficult to actually pinpoint the place from where the source of anxiety actually originates from. Phobias are pretty straight-forward, but anxiety can be a bit of an onion you have to peel back to understand its root cause or like trying to open the safe in the movie, Inception. BTW, did you know Leonardo Di Caprio has OCD?
For me, my sources of anxiety have evolved over the years from a fear of losing friends, speaking in public, dropping out of college, being a below-average parent (all of which I’ve done to some degree) to more recently being considered incompetent at my job by my peers, talking in front of business executives, getting laid off, being in financial ruin and moving back in with my mom. I also get anxious when thinking about being judged by others. The people normally were strangers, co-workers and acquaintances, but once my anxiety was full-blown it led to me even being anxious around family and close friends. What I find interesting is what feared the most is something I had a bad habit of doing to others. I was quite critical and judgmental of people through my adolescent, teenage and early adult years and it is said that chickens will always come home to roost. In my situation, my judgmental attitude turned against me and tormented me for years as I thought everyone was judging me.
Ultimately, my sources of anxiety have always been around the fear of failure, and when I refer to failure I mean to be considered less than amongst my family, peers, and people I admire or just society in general. For the people who have seen the Black Mirror episode, Nosedive, that chalks up my life pretty well when it comes to worrying about what others think.
When I talk with people with generalized anxiety, once they pull back the curtain, it typically really isn’t about getting a D in Biology, not performing well in the interview, not being selected for that job/program or being judged by friends. It really is some deeper fear that is a bit more abstract than the surface examples they give. The fear is not achieving their purpose in life, to not reach one’s goals/aspirations, and the surface example they give is only a precursor for this larger failure. It’s almost like once the first bad thing happens then a domino effect of misery is close behind until they reach the abyss of failure. Some of us have a difficult time even describing this fear because we don’t even know what our purpose is because so much of what we want to attain has been dictated by society. We are actually worrying about not achieving some ideals that we didn’t even construct ourselves, but I am now getting on a soapbox. The impending failures we consume ourselves with which drive us to these thoughts and actions are really not as bad as we make them out to be. As you get older, you will run into your fair share of failures, and funny enough sometimes they will be the things you dreaded and were anxious about like a divorce, laid off, death of a loved on, financial difficulties, so on, but when they actually occur, they don’t suck nearly as bad as we made them out to be. Or they do suck as bad as you thought, but the worrying about them didn’t help any bit with dealing with the situation once it occurs. Don’t get me wrong, some things are terrible and are painful, but in every failure, or so-called tragedy, I had in life has made me who I am. I don’t even know who I would be without my failures. All the character and depth I have as a person came out of those failures I was trying so hard to prevent. Without those failure I’d be a pretty shallow person without much substance. I don’t think I’d even be authentic if I didn’t have those experiences.
I don’t want to use the word that failures make us stronger because that is a bit cliche, but I feel for certain that failures give us perspective, which in turn gives us wisdom, and if we’re honest, it will bring humility and we all need a dose of that every now and again.
What’s my recommendation then. Really try and understand what makes you anxious and once you determine it is some looming failure then you need to take that failure head on. If you’re anxious about getting fired and sleeping in your car, then quit your job and go sleep in your car and get it over with and if you think that is too silly to do, then try and get to the realization that if this situation happens you will be ok because you will. You will live and life will go on.
A great podcast to listen to about anxiety and failure is ‘the overwhelmed brain’ with Paul Colaianni, episode 310: Changing your habitual negative emotions about the past or future (link below). He starts to ask a series of probing questions to help change your perspective on fear.
I suggest you run through failure and don’t let failure run you.
Chris Hadwick said it best, “No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.”
Continue to endure,
Mayan
Podcast – ‘the overwhelmed brain, with Paul Colainni’, Episode 310: Changing your habitual negative emotions about the past or future
