What Was I Thinking?? Perspective on Fear
Posted on December 28, 2012 by Meryl Frank Harari, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
When you look back into the "rearview mirror" of your life, has fear of failure or success influenced your choices?
I read “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost many years ago and his words have always stayed with me. The poem so elegantly summed up a life of choices and decisions made–and not made.
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
If you want to take a different road today, don’t beat yourself up for not doing it sooner. No regrets! We all make decisions based on very unique circumstances that are in play at a fixed point in time. We can’t recreate what was, but only make new decisions based on new awareness of what we now know.
To get some perspective into upcoming decisions, I often suggest that my clients consider how their choices might look in the “rearview mirror” of their life. I ask them to think about how they might feel in retrospect NOT accepting that job opportunity, promotion, or relocation. Could there be relief? Regret? Sadness? Sour grapes?
So what makes us hesitant to make the changes we say we so desperately want? Fear compels us to stay with the status quo simply because it is known. Much has been written about fear of failure, but I believe that our discomfort with change and the unknown can be so acute that we can even manifest a fear of success.
In any case, fear is a huge driver for choices both made and not made. I recently read a post on this subject written by Michael Luckman on TrainerView.com. He posits that early on, when we fail to conform with and follow the rules that adults set out for us, we risk being labeled and judged as non-compliant, out-of-step, or different. With that, comes exposure which can often be public and embarrassing.
I was always a shy child and I remember a situation in second grade where I daringly put a blob of clay on the end of a pencil and was waving it around and giggling with a boy I liked who sat across the room. The teacher caught us playing and was so harsh in her reprimand that I remember being red-faced and mortified. That made such a strong impression on me that I never wanted to be called out like that again in front of my peers so I became the “good girl” and risked little for many years… until I noticed that thought pattern was holding me back.
Per Luckman, “As we grow older and experience more and more of these embarrassingly judgmental circumstances, our fear of failure grows, and we develop ways to avoid these situations. The number one avoidance method is to not do anything until we are sure we won’t fail. And since we cannot know beforehand whether what we do will succeed or not, we often choose to do nothing. We begin avoiding new things, and thus have limited ourselves to only what we know and are comfortable with.”
I personally followed that recipe for many years until my desire for success became greater than my fear of failure and I started to take more risks – just small ones at first and as you know, each little victory breeds confidence to try something new.
Here’s where the rearview mirror analogy becomes pretty interesting. When we get to a point of looking back over our lives, we can see triumphs, success and decisions–both good and bad. But what about those things we just never did because we were afraid? If you just stop right now and review your list, do you see many things you ‘could-have-done, should-have-done, if-only…’?
What if you faced your fears today and took some of those risks? What if you just started small with one little step at a time? Take a deep breath and take a chance.
Luckman says, “Don’t be afraid to experience new things NOW, and live the life you’ve always wanted.”
Other quotes from smart, accomplished people:
Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. ~Louis E. Boone
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. ~ Dale Carnegie
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
