“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” — Robert Burns

Like many things, the fear of failure is not something that is necessarily fun to start working on. It’s much easier to convince yourself that you are happier with the path your life is on. Realistically, it’s partially true. Humans are much like water in we choose the path of least resistance. However, I’ve always believed that personal growth is an important part of being an interesting and fully formed human. Not that you have to constantly be making large changes to yourself, but a stagnant pool smells and gathers mosquitoes while a slowly babbling brook is lovely to sit by.

I can’t say that I don’t love to grow as a person. I am hyper aware of myself, sometimes to my own detriment, which means I am tent to take notice when I am limiting myself. Of course this also means I know exactly how to ignore and avoid dealing with my self sabotage. I mean, a girl can only handle so much at once before she needs a break. I tend to be good at pushing my boundaries when I know the potential for success is at least 70%. I have dreams and aspirations that tend to fall in that 50-70% chance of success that, while I make progress, require me to be much braver. This is the fear of failure I’m working on overcoming. If failure is most likely a certainty then it’s not something worth working towards or it requires much more work beforehand.

Over the past year I have been trying to ask myself those hard questions. Who benefits from my failure and who benefits from my success? What happens if I fail? What happens if I succeed? I have been trying to work through the worst and best case scenarios. Unless the worst case scenario involves death, destruction, annihilation, or general loss of more than an ounce of self esteem, it really seems recoverable. It may take me some time apart from specific goals so that I can lick my wounds, but it’s not the end of the world. It can still be difficult to convince myself that it’s worth it, but at the end of the day, growth as a person is always worth it.