By Dr. David Smith
I once had an athlete ask me, “what if I fail?”
Fear of failure is very common in sport, academics, and generally in life. Understandably so, because what will we do if we put in the work and end up with nothing? It’s scary to think about. I advised him to accept that failure will happen, embrace it as part of life. Failure is your destiny. Really, coach?
The road to success is paved by failure because failure presents an opportunity for growth. Through failure we learn how *not* to do things, and we learn better about what we need to change. The biggest champions the world has ever seen, whether in sport, entertainment, science, social justice, politics, leadership, and life; achieved what they did because of failure.
So, then I asked him, “what if you succeed?”
And it was a question he never truly considered. Sure, he had goals and dreams, but his road to success wasn’t being built. He was doing enough to survive; he was playing it safe. He was so consumed by a fear of failure, that the thought of success never even occurred to him.
With the uncertainties and instabilities of current events, divisive politics, doom scrolling, record high prices, income inequality, retirement fever dreams, crippling medical debt, and impending doom. It’s safe to say that the morale of our society is quite low right now given we went from a campaign of “Hope” to one of fear and prejudice.
Understandably people have retracted into “safe mode”, just doing whatever they can to survive and get by. After all it’s better to play it safe given what we see on our social media feeds and the consequences of those who take the risk. I constantly remind folks that while there’s a lot of doom and gloom, this also isn’t the first time we are going through this. As a society this is a common repetitive theme throughout history, and we can learn a lot from that. Inspire hope for the future by looking to the past. In fact, the defining moments of history were built upon people who took the lead, leaders who had vision and knowing the potential consequences, were willing to take the risks. People who taught us and reminded us that it’s okay to “believe”.
As a decidedly secular person myself, I rarely talk religion. We all have the right and freedom to our beliefs, so long as we don’t impose them upon others without their consent. In regard to spirituality, I firmly subscribe to the notion that all of us need faith. Whether it’s faith in a higher power, faith in us, and/or faith in that the legs of my chair won’t give out when my big butt sits down. Faith drives our sense of belief, in that we believe in ourselves, we believe in each other, we believe we can achieve the thing, we believe that things will work out as they’re supposed to.
I’ve grown quite frustrated in my own personal and professional endeavors at times. I am an ambitious and motivated person, constantly striving for challenge and growth. Exploring and discovering all that I *can* do and that I am capable of, while trying to navigate through fields well known for some truly spectacular moments of success and even more spectacular moments of failure. Fields also very well known for playing it safe. I’ve worked with many people who are great at managing while lacking a clear sense of leadership. Lots of “no” because the powers that be are rooted in the way things have always been done. Letting themselves get caught up in the convoluted bureaucracy of it all that they cannot see the forest through the trees. Allowing themselves and their programs deteriorate deeper into mediocrity because of what is and always has been rather than what it could be.
Sport coaches will often tell me, “We don’t need a sport psychologist/mental performance/ mental skills coach; there’s nothing wrong with us!” and then take to the field where winning and losing is nothing more than a probability. Really, coach? You’re playing it safe; you’ve grown stagnate and complacent and it shows. Win or lose, real champions are built on striving to be the best version of themselves. Something I am finding rarer to be seen in my day-to-day life.
Where’s the vision? Where’s the drive? Where’s the willingness to try new things? Where’s the risk? Where’s the opportunity to grow and learn? Where’s the strive to be the best of who we are?
Some of my favorite times of life have been when I’ve been part of groups and/or teams where we were all driven by a sense of belonging and purpose greater than oneself. When managers were leaders and could inspire people to go above and beyond oneself. Everybody working toward achieving greatness together, to share in the fruits of our success and discover our capabilities from within to express the best of ourselves. We would take risks, try new things, let ourselves learn from failure to build ourselves up to achieve success.
It seems hokey, but Ted Lasso really did say it best:
“Belief doesn’t just happen because you hang something on a wall. It comes from in here. [points to his heart]. And up here. [points to his head] And down here. [points to his gut] The only problem is, we’ve all got so much junk floatin’ through us, a lot of times we end up gettin’ in our own way. Crap like envy, or fear, shame. I don’t wanna mess around with that shit anymore, know what I mean? Do you? You know what I wanna mess around with? The belief that I matter, regardless of what I do or don’t achieve. Or the belief that we all deserve to be loved, whether we’ve been hurt or hurt somebody else. Or what about the belief of hope?
That’s what I want to mess with. Believing that things can get better, that I can get better. That we *will* get better. You believe in yourself, you believe in one another. That’s fundamental to being alive. If you can do that, if each of you can truly do that… can’t nobody rip that apart.”
Photo Credit: Tenzin (Courtesy of Pride Cheerleading Association)
stonewallperformance.com 