If you go online, I’m sure you’ll find popularized sayings like “get hit 7 times, get up 8,” and “It’s not about how hard you get, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep going.” These sayings were created to show people that failure is not something to be afraid of, but as many times as I would read them, I still didn’t understand why failure sould be an option. I went on in life, living in my comfort zone and going through the motions to survive. As long as I lived comfortably and did not die, I felt that life was okay and that I didn’t need to take risks or pursue different adventures. One day, I found myself in a crowded room of students, and there was some guy who came to speak to us. I was halfway zoned out until he said something to the effect of “life begins at the end of our comfort zone.” This struck me as interesting, so I continued listening carefully. The speech continued and started to address the issues of fear and failure. This is where I began to have an ideological shift.
The speech went on for quite some time, but I will try to summarize the main points. Fear is something created by us as a result of our past experiences in which we felt pain, sadness, or failure. When we find ourselves in similar situations to ones we have experienced or seen as able to cause these reactions (i.e. public speaking, haunted houses, testing), we automatically trigger that sense of fear, and it has the same effect on how we act whether it’s something small like talking to a new person or something as serious as being hunted by the mob. We fear failure because whenever we have experienced failure, we’ve experienced humiliation or some other emotion. We have been trained to believe that success is the only option, but failure is the only way to improve and learn. This struck me, and as I reflected on how that was applicable in my life, the gears in my head started turning and making connections.
Life is good. We live, eat, sleep, play, laugh, connect, fear, and fail. Fear and failure are inherent in our human life, and it’s how people learn how to succeed. There’s really not much else to it, but for so long, I had not been able to understand it.
- John Hatton