Fear Of Failure

For all one knows, everyone is familiar with the fear of failure: a paralyzing sensation of a probable setback preventing a person from future accomplishments, transiting from a child to being an adult, finding one´s identity and purpose, developing new models of behavior, fleeing from one´s comfort zone, maturing and so on. What´s more, the fear of failure can affect one´s consciousness either permanently or temporarily. It can affect a person´s life so greatly that even a gifted man or woman who has reached success due to their talents prefer to stay passive to avoid potential failures.

Nevertheless, there is also another fear, interpreted in myriad ways, which for some people may seem paradoxical but sometimes can be an unbearable barricade

Who doesn’t have big plans they never get around to acting on? For way too long, I held on to the fantasy of a completely different life and I couldn’t help wondering why certain endeavors just seemed impossible to make happen. I wanted to fit in and be praised by as many people as possible. I particularly never wanted to let my parents down. I worked hard to be good at most of the things that they valued even though it was tiresome at times but I was lucky on many occasions to get the attention I worked hard for. I started this behavior in elementary school and developed it into a habit that was part of me up to my third year of high school. I had paid more attention to pleasing people so much that I had lost focus of what I really wanted to be in life. This reality dawned on me at the time when I was unable to identify my future career and did not know what I was going to study in college. I had dedicated my life to pleasing others through performing several activities in which I ranked average and was no longer sure of what I performed best. It was even more devastating to realize that most of the activities which I had performed occasionally were contrary to my hopes and wishes because I had done them to fit in. I had naively discounted them as things I never intended to stick with. Respectable occupations, I thought, while preparing myself for something brilliant that would eventually define me. I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself and what those closest to me expected of me. I would like to make it clear, parenthetically, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. You can´t always blame them for guiding you in the wrong direction. The moment you are in control of the steering wheel, responsibility lies with