FAILURE, WHY IS IT FEARED?

Every person has his or her own fears. Although we use the word often, we don’t stop to think about what fear actually is. Fear is merely an emotion caused by a belief that something can cause pain or become dangerous. All of us, in one way or another, fear something in life. Spiders, snakes, and heights, just to name a few, are some things people may fear. When we first encounter something that frightens us, the hypothalamus in the brain releases signals to the Sympathetic Nervous System. The Sympathetic Nervous System receives these signals and releases chemicals, such as adrenaline. This chemical stimulation causes an increase in heart rate; thus, explaining why our heart beats faster when we are afraid. 

Out of all the possible fears in the world, people have told me they fear failure the most. I could not help but stop and think about this idea. What could make failure the biggest fear in a person’s mind? Could it cause our death? Could it damage our self-identity and self-love? Could it break us away from our family? All these questions come to mind when thinking about failure. Failure could help propel one to success, or it could be a dream crusher. Personally, I value fear because it teaches valuable life lessons.

Failure is the greatest teacher

How can failure be the greatest teacher? To understand it, lets put things into perspective with an example. Joe is born with gifted intelligence and athleticism. Everything comes naturally to Joe: math, science, English, and he has a great sense of sportsmanship. Joe blows right through high school with straight A’s and gets a scholarship to play any sport in college.

Once Joe goes to college, things do not come as naturally as they once did in high school. Joe’s GPA went from 4.0 to 2.7. On the grading scale, this is not a failing GPA. However, Joe does not take this lightly. Joe acts as if he was failing every single class and he becomes very stressed. This stressful experience is one that Joe has never experienced before. On top of this, Joe is removed from the sports team that he had committed to due to his GPA falling below 3.0.

This is uncharted territory for Joe. For the first time in his life, Joe is experiencing the sour taste of failure. Joe is feeling defeated, hurt, embarrassed, and depressed. He now thinks, “What now? Is my dream crushed and my future gone?”

Ever since Joe was born, all he had experienced was success and victory. Now that he is experiencing failure, he does not know how to crawl out of this mess. No exposure to failure leaves Joe with no solution to the dilemma.

Now, let’s look at Kate. Kate is born with average intelligence and athleticism. Everything Kate does seems to turn out mediocre at best. During high school, Kate just goes through the motions and does not make any sports team. As college approaches, Kate decides to make a change in order to start performing better than she has been in the past.

Kate starts to read, write, and listen to podcasts on her own time. In addition, Kate practices shooting and dribbling every day in order to try out for a college team. Soon enough, Kate increased her GPA to 3.8 and received a walk-on scholarship to play basketball in college. Up until college, Kate has failed or underachieved in almost every aspect of her life. Everything Kate has accomplished, she had to work for it. Nothing was given to Kate, everything was earned. Living a life of constant hardship has forced Kate to learn from her mistakes. In the end, all the pain and failure this person experienced ended up being the best creator for success.

Now, let’s look at some of my personal experiences with failure. 

My experience with failure

At some point in our lives, we have all dealt with failure in one way or another. Personally, I have been exposed to failure ever since grade school. I know this sounds crazy but hear me out. For me, school was one of the hardest things to commit to. I was a below-average student with sub-par communication skills. Basically, I was not a student, nor a scholar. In the third grade, my teacher called my mother and me up to the school for a conference. At this conference, my teacher emphasized that I had performed very poorly on my report card. In addition to this, she believed that I was autistic and that I belonged in specialized classes.

At the time, I did not know what was going on. However, as I got older, I started to realize what my teacher was saying about me. Once I caught on, something sparked in my mind from that point forward. I realized that I had the power within me to be more than just an “Autistic” student with poor social skills. Instead of allowing what she said to define me, I was determined that It was up to me to prove this teacher wrong.

Fast forward to middle school and I had finally gotten my act together. I was pushing myself to become a better student and performing well in the classroom. Then, Seventh grade came around and I hit a wall.  My mathematics teacher gave me a D- for my year average. This D- took away any hopes of me earning a spot in the Arista Honor Key. As a kid it’s easy to blame other people, and in this case, that’s is exactly what I did. I put all the blame in the world on this teacher, and I even had my mom call up the school to complain.

Looking back now, this was one of the biggest mistakes I could’ve made. You see, the teacher’s job is to teach and my job was to take notes, study, and do the homework. Ultimately, I was responsible for my grade, not my teacher. This enabled me to realize that in the end, you are the only person responsible for your actions, no one else. If you fail a test, that is because you did not prepare properly for it, not because the teacher felt like failing you.

Hopefully, you could start to see why failure is my greatest motivator. However, I think it is vital that I talk about one last failure I have experienced. This failure is the one that beat me down and depressed me the most.

I applied to become an Ambassador for the Bare Performance Nutrition supplement company. Nick Bare, owner, and CEO of BPN is one person that continually inspires, motivates, and teaches me the positivity of life. It is a dream of mine to meet him in person and join the BPN team.

 I applied and got promoted to the phone call interview and I was ecstatic. This was especially tough because of the qualifications to receive this position. I’m no professional bodybuilder, model, YouTuber, actor, or athlete. I’m simply a nineteen-year-old young man driven by his purpose in life. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than life, and I thought I could have done this by joining the BPN team. All the odds were against me. My competition was more popular and public than I was. After the phone call interview, I felt confident, passionate, and ready.

 A few days passed and I finally received the long-anticipated email. However, it was not the email I was expecting. I was advised that the BPN team would no longer be moving forward with my application. I was devastated, my dream was crushed. So, what now? Where do I go? As much as I would’ve liked to do nothing, I refused to sit idle. I knew that this failure had to teach me some sort of lesson.

My brother’s friend, a USAPL powerlifter, was a sponsored athlete. He told me about a representative opportunity for the company he works for, Campus Protein. I then applied to become a representative of Campus Protein Northeast. Gratefully, I was accepted into this company and began my new journey with the Campus Protein team. Boy, did this acceptance feel amazing. I felt like I could do anything in the world!

I tell you this story because all of this happened within one week. My greatest failure and my strongest bounce back happened within a matter of days. The lesson I took away from this is that we should not fear failure. As you can see from my story above, failure opens us up to opportunities we never thought existed. Everyone’s story is unique, so failure might teach everyone a different lesson than it taught me. When that time comes, be open and ready because you don’t know what that lesson might have in store for you.

Failure is an invitation to success

It’s not easy to cope with failure, I know firsthand. Just because we fail a test doesn’t mean we should let it consume us. Take the opportunities we are given and make the most of them. Okay, you failed your first math exam. Take this as a lesson to study harder for the second math test. Everything that happens to us happens for a reason. Every day we are faced with challenges that might knock us down. If we get knocked down, we are going to have to get back up. So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to fear failure and never take a leap of faith towards success? Or, are you going to invite failure and learn from our mistakes?