“The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh
When we love and lose or try and fail, we fear that we will have another painful experience. When we succeed or win, possibly at the expense of others, we may surprisingly feel uncomfortable or revengeful. As a consequence we learn to restrain ourselves in love and in life, thus risking neither failure nor success. We may feel like the whole world going against us. Alternately we may be guilty-ridden and afraid to feel satisfied. Just asking how to end fear doesn’t change the situation, but why is there so much fear in your body, where does it come from, and how does it affect your life experience?
You need to learn whether you struggling with the fear of failure or if the fear of success holding you back. Either way, the fact remains that much of our fear stems from our lack of emotional and sometimes physical security as children and adults. If we fear failure, whether it is in love, in our career choices, or in life in general, we fear that we will be shattered if we fail. It is called “atychiphobia”; or “non-directed phobia”.
Failure is often mistaken as an emotional wound. When we fail in a performance or a competition, we worry that we won’t be able to perform again. A failed love means a broken heart. Equally devastating is the failure of a task or set goal. Failure means the inability to catch up, the inability to achieve. To protect ourselves from the pain of failure, we often don’t open up enough to others to “go all out” at work or play. We become good at sabotaging ourselves.
On the other hand, it’s amazing how success can be scary. Fear of success can also be referred to as “success anxiety” or “success phobia.” It is called “achievemephobia”. Fear of success results in perfectionism, procrastination, quitting, or even self-destructiveness. It is combined with fear of being emotionally or physically harmed or killed. That is why we often undermine our efforts. It can ruin an effort or destroy a relationship. When we succeed or win we fear guilt or regret, feeling that the success is at somebody else’s expense. We learn to hold back in love and life, thereby not risking either failure or success.
I don’t think there is anything more liberating than the understanding that we tend to dwell more on negative emotions. And the mind becomes possessed by negativities brought on by these two types of fear. We should realize that failure is not the opposite of success, it is part of success.
In life, failure is inevitable. When you realize that, you free yourself from the fear of failure and are able to learn from it. Doing something you previously didn’t believe possible is liberating. The more you adjust to this change in perspective, the better you’ll be able to tackle your fears in the future and succeed.
“Let go of the need to control the outcome. Trust the process. Trust your intuition. Trust yourself.” ~Unknown
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