Many of us have feared failure at one point or another in our lives. Although I deal with this fear, too, I always thought thought it was kind of strange. For one, fearing failure is fearing something that is intangible, an idea. It’s not something tangible, like a fear of lightning or bears.
Plus, fearing failure is fearing something that might never happen. It’s not like a fear of using drugs if we’re in recovery. In that case, we’ve experienced the negative effects of drugs. We know what they can do because we’ve seen firsthand what they can do. But fearing failure is fearing something that might or might not happen.
Of course, failing in life is to be expected sometimes. It’s just that we don’t know when we’re going to fail or how we’re going to fail. In some instances, we might work hard, have supreme confidence in ourselves or our endeavors, but we fail anyway. Other times, we might not put forth as much effort into something, or be less confident about our attempts, but still succeed anyway.
Given the nature of failure, maybe we should shift the way we think about it. Maybe we should recognize that, yes, failure is going to happen in our lives, and it’s going to happen repeatedly. Even highly successful people aren’t successful 100% of the time.
But we should also remember that just as people don’t succeed 100% of the time, they don’t fail 100% of the time, either. Success can be temporary, but so can failure. Just as we can’t rest on our successes and stop trying, we also can’t dwell on our failures and beat ourselves up for them. We can’t spend all of time fearing failure. If we do that, we might not have the time, energy, or effort to work toward successes or even appreciate our successes if we’ve achieved them. It’s healthy to acknowledge both failure and success, but it’s not healthy to dwell on either of them.
