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The familiar cliché is fear of failure, but that’s a misnomer. Most people are very familiar with failure, and as a consequence have very little fear of it.
That may sound like a riddle, but it’s easily explained by a phrase we use all the time: “In a crisis we go back to old beliefs and old behaviors.” Since we know failure so intimately, it’s that familiarity that calls us home.
The real issue is fear of success, and since we are not familiar with it, we are drawn away from it and back to what we know best, failure. It may seem odd since we covet success so much that we would veer from it just when it’s within our grasp.
The world of sports gives excellent examples of athletes who had great difficulty succeeding even though they were infinitely talented. In particular, back in the day, young Tom Watson was the up and coming phenom, but couldn’t break into the winner’s circle. He once entered the last day of a tournament with a seven stroke lead and lost. He was called a choker, but that wasn’t really fair. He just had a devil of a time crossing from one comfort or familiarity zone to a new and higher one. When he finally broke through, he became the #1 player in the world and held that position for several years.
The issue of failure and success correlates to grief and loss in an interesting way, again by using the phrase, “In a crisis we go back to old beliefs and old behaviors.” When we experience a major loss—death, divorce, health, career—we automatically summon whatever information we have stored in our minds on how to deal with the feelings that loss provokes. The stored information we have will either be helpful or not helpful, and as such, will either lead to success or failure in how well we adapt to the loss and whether or not we know what to do to be able to complete what the loss left emotionally incomplete for us.
Success in recovering from grief is the result of small and correct action choices. But you must learn the correct choices and take them or you'll be like a hamster on a wheel going round in circles.
