My Biggest Fear
Yes, amidst other fears I have, my biggest fear is FAILURE. The thought of it alone makes me want to hide in my shell. I never want to fail at anything, and the thought of failing has actually held me back from trying out many things. I get so scared of failing at a thing that I’d rather not try it.
Off course, I’ve tried my hands at a couple of things and they worked, you would think that will be enough to push me to keep trying even if I fail at it, but the reverse is the case. It seems like when it’s time for me to try out something different, my brain goes into this “what if it fails” mode, and as much as I try to push it away, it still shows up once in a while.
I hung out with a friend, and we had to use the escalator, I tried to see if there was an alternative mode of transport but I couldn’t find any, and my friend was already ahead of me, I took it and almost missed a step. At this point, I wasn’t even scared of the people around me, I just wanted to get to my destination.
It was time to leave, and we took the escalator, but this time my fear of failure showed up, you’d think you’re done with being scared of failing but once in a while, it shows its head and you find yourself back there.
We stepped on the escalator at the same time but I stayed back watching my friend move down unbothered. Torn between screaming my friend’s name, or facing the unknown “what if I fall down”. It was a bit easier for me while going up than coming down. I stood there laughing at my biggest fear, and hoping someone would use the escalator and be able to help me down. I wish I knew why I was laughing. 😂 😂
Fortunately, there was a security guy standing close by, I wanted to ask him for an alternative mode of transport but instead, I asked him to help me, he accepted, held my arm and we moved, he left it when he saw that I was steady on the escalator. My friend was coming back to look for me when we met at the door, had no knowledge of what just happened and I didn’t bother to share. But I knew it was much more than escalophobia, it was the fear of failing.
No, I have never slipped off an escalator, and neither have I ever fallen off the stairs, yes, I’m scared of stairs too or should I say heights, but I like tall guys. 😂
This is what our minds do, it tricks us to believe what is not real or focus on the bad side. I don’t know why or how it does that, and I’m honestly not interested in knowing. Why will it not focus on the good side and be optimistic? guess we will never know, but then it can be influenced.
Going forward, I won’t be scared of using the escalator even if there is an alternative means of moving. The worst that would happen is I either find myself on gossip blogs the next day or successfully used the escalator for movement and score against my village people.
Yes, I am still scared of failing, but will it stop me from trying? NO, it won’t or I won’t allow it. In fact, I want to see the failure by myself when it happens.
The interesting part is that every time I’ve failed, it didn’t stop me from trying again, like when I failed a promotional exam and had to repeat a class in secondary school, or when I failed at publishing a book on the date I had previously announced. For this failure at publishing, I cried my eyes out when the realization dawned on me that it was a failure. But look at me, I’ve cleaned the tears, and even intensified efforts in publishing the book in a few months. (Click the subscribe link to get a mail when the book is launched.)
I could go on and on about many scenarios but the key thing is that the fear of failing shouldn’t cripple you from trying things out, imagine the worse scenario, imagine the best scenario and make your decision from it. Like i will always say, all die na die.
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