I’m afraid of failure. I don’t think that I’m alone in this, but after failing to reach my 40 minute 5K goal last week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about failure and how I let it affect me.
I don’t remember having a lot of failures as a child. I was a good student and I happily worked my ass off in school to get decent grades and do my parents proud. I took piano lessons from the time I was six years old right through high school and played two pieces in a piano concert every one of those years and as far as I can remember, I never once messed up enough to think I’d failed to give a good performance. I was in several school plays and musicals and never had difficulty remember lines and songs. I gave speeches in class and barely batted an eye. Most of it just seemed easy to me. If I wanted to do something, I just did it.
And then my freshman year in college that one Sunday morning happened. My grandmother’s church invited me to play the offertory on a Sunday morning and I accepted. I played Beethoven’s Fur Elise, and I was fabulous during the first half and then for some reason I cannot explain, I lost my fingering and was like so many deer in the headlights. I could not recover. I had to stop for nearly a full thirty seconds and just breathe before I could even start again and do the piece any sort of justice. I felt terrible for the rest of the day. I felt like I’d let my grandmother down, and I was so embarrassed that I could barely make eye contact with anyone there.
Looking back on that now, I still feel shame, because I can see that I allowed my memories of that moment and the resulting fear of failure to all but kill my dreams of being a serious musician. I couldn't perform in public after that. People would ask and I would say “no” without even giving it a thought because I never wanted to feel that terrible again. In fact, I all but gave it up. I rarely sat down to play, not even for my own pleasure, and I would firmly and quickly change the subject if anyone ever asked me why. Just the mere thought of performing in front of an audience crippled me with fear.
That fear bled over into other aspects of my life. I found myself getting really anxious while handling work-related projects because I didn't want the embarrassment of failing in those situations. I would give up on my dreams before I even started because I feared I wouldn't have the skills to do what needed to be done to bring those dreams to life. In short, I lived a very safe--and unfulfilling--life for several years. I was just too scared to take risks in any aspect of my life.
Thankfully, I did eventually get over it. I have good friends and family who helped me see that failures are stepping stones towards fulfilling my dreams rather than the end of them. I've learned that I have to pick myself up and try again every single time, because with enough hard work I’ll make it there, even if I fail several times on the way. And that is why I signed myself up for another 5K this coming Sunday. I’m going to go for that 40 minutes again. I’m confident that I can do it, but if I don’t, I will try again. And I will keep trying until I reach that goal.
And then I will set another goal and work towards it. I won’t stop running and I will keep raising the bar. I am going to run a marathon someday.
And just in case anyone is wondering, I did get over my fear of public performances. I am not playing the piano much these days, but I joined a choir that is full of wonderful, loving people led by a remarkable director. With their help, I have overcome my fear, and music is a major part of my life again. I’m so very grateful for that.
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