The fear of failure
Do the people you surround yourself with dictate your success? Is procrastination good or bad for you?
We’ve all at some point worried about meeting others or our own expectations, about doing something wrong, looking foolish, or not being able to reach a goal—basically, the fear of failing at something.
Now I could sit here and write about things that you’ve already read about, such as Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, and so many more who are now hugely successful, but earlier in their careers, when no one knew them, they also didn’t exactly succeed at what they initially set their minds to. As much as these people have extremely inspiring stories, I also feel these stories can become so repetitive that they almost fall on deaf ears.
So rather than talk about how to battle the fear of failure or miracle things that you can do to all of a sudden have no fear of failure, which, well, just doesn’t exist, I’m going to talk about the things that don’t help. This way, it should be much easier for you to try to tackle these habits you already have and make a change. It’s much easier to alter existing habits than it is to build new ones.
For some people, it’s not as easy as reading a few inspirational quotes. For some people, walking around with a rain cloud hanging over their heads full of negativity and doubt is a part of everyday life. Every day can end up being a struggle trying to clear the sky so you can feel a little bit of that sunshine on your face. As much as this is definitely not me today, this feeling does resonate with me because, at one point in my life, many, many years ago, this was me.
Thankfully, this wasn’t my natural state; unfortunately, that period of my life was due to my then-partner, who had a big hand in filling my head with self-doubt and lowering every good characteristic I had. I won’t go into this today, but the reason I brought it up is because I want you to understand that who you choose as your life partner or who you choose to spend the majority of your time around can very easily dictate who you are as a person and how you deal with your insecurities.
Don't get me wrong. I don’t believe that failure or negativity are purely dictated by the people around you. I am just merely stating that the same way we can be influenced to think positively about ourselves, we can also be influenced to think negatively about ourselves. Even without anyone around us, we’ve all at some point experienced that nagging self-doubt and made comparisons between ourselves and those around us or people we see on social media.
So who do you spend most of your time with? Is it just one friend, or do you have a group of friends that you regularly spend time with? Or, like me, do you spend most of your time with your partner? Whoever it is that you spend most of your time with, ask yourself a few questions:
After you’ve left that person and had some time to yourself, how do you feel?
Do you feel inspired, or do you feel deflated?
Do they make you feel positive, or do you have more negative thoughts?
Do you end up procrastinating soon after leaving them, or are you motivated?
If the answers to these questions are mainly negative, and by that I mean that you have come to the conclusion that you feel more negative after seeing them, then clearly something needs to change. No, I don’t mean you need to ditch your friend! Just being more aware of how this person can make you feel is a step in the right direction. The fact that you’re more aware of this the next time you see your friend means that you should leave feeling better than the last time.
If you’re spending time with someone who’s sucking the life right out of you or who is just generally negative or full of self-doubt, which is then projected onto you, how about you focus on trying to uplift them a little bit rather than allowing them to bring you down? I don’t have a list of solutions for this type of problem; however, as mentioned earlier, becoming aware is the first step to change.
Now let’s talk about procrastination. The definition of procrastination is putting off doing something that we could very easily do now. Personally, I feel procrastinating can ruin your life for literally no reason whatsoever. Taking a break, however, is very different from procrastinating. I actively take breaks, sometimes for more than a day, so that I can rest, recharge, and do things that I enjoy that are not necessarily goal-oriented. Procrastinating, however, is just delaying actions that you could take to achieve your goals.
Do I believe that someone actively decides to procrastinate? Yes and no. Some people actively choose to procrastinate due to laziness, and some people fall into procrastination because the more anxiety they have about failing to reach their goals, the less likely they are to take action toward achieving them. This anxiety can then also lead to a vicious self-defeating cycle of you questioning yourself, such as acknowledging that you didn’t do anything today, which then leads to guilt if you’re not doing anything, and so it continues.
Procrastinating has also been somewhat glorified through social media. Scrolling on TikTok, you’ll find numerous videos of people talking about how they have been procrastinating for days and days, and they’re proud of it. And if they are proud of it, then good for them. I'm assuming it doesn’t stop them from achieving whatever goals they may have, but then this makes me question if they’re actually procrastinating. Have they just chosen to take a break, and now just jumping on the social media bandwagon of glorifying procrastination? You also get the TikTok videos of people owning their procrastination but then equally drowning in self-doubt and guilt at the end of the day because they haven’t managed to get anything done that they were meant to get done.
After doing a lot of research on the fear of failing and procrastination, I learned that there is a strong link between the fear of failure and procrastination. It could be that you don’t know how to do a task because you're unsure how to do it and put it off in fear of not doing it properly. It could be that you need to do something you’re not fully comfortable with, which can cause anxiety, leading to fear and procrastination.
My personal opinion is that you only fail when you stop trying. The minute you stop trying, you're basically giving up. The other point of view is that someone may have so much fear or anxiety about failing that they stay away from even trying. Imagine if all the influential people I spoke about earlier had given up when the self-doubt kicked in. And yes, they also had some level of self-doubt; anyone would. They wouldn't have accomplished everything they have, and we wouldn't be using them as inspiration in our own lives.
The list of examples can go on and on, but ultimately, what is important to take away from this is that your initial fear can cause you to end up procrastinating, which leads to not reaching your goals. I hope the next time you feel that self-doubt or anxiety kicking in, you do your best to overcome it by starting the task in question and taking that first step in reaching your goal.
Very well written Nina! It’s true who you spend you time with will effect you in a negative way or positive way. Sometimes you can feel like not yourself for example when you are around constant complaining people who suck the life out of you. Because it rubs off on you to have a bad day too. At work I have a person like that but I try to do the best job that I can without being effected by her. On a good note, my boyfriend Jose is very supportive of me and even if I have a bad hair\makeup day, or even work days. Even too it’s good to set up goals for the future even if it’s 5-10 years from now or even in the distant future like retirement planning too. Thanks Nina for reading this long comment. I appreciate it. God Bless!
Ah Nina, seriously feel like you wrote this for me. Because I NEEDED to hear this and I really needed encouragement. To know that you have struggled also with certain things makes me feel less alone and brings comfort to me that, if you can push through so can I. Unfortunately, I can’t open up much to siblings or certain friends. So just hearing this brought me strength. Thanks for being so real and raw! ~Bekah 💜😌