On Fear...and Kicking it to the Curb!

This weekend, I took off on a long walk outside on a beautiful, 70deg St. Patrick’s Day morning with a travel mug in my hand and a Jillian Michaels’ podcast in my ears. The title of the show was “Negating Ourselves & The Spirituality of Food” (two separate topics covered…not a weird topic mashup).  The show focused mainly on these two topics, and at the end of the show Jillian took a call from a listener who had recently lost about 100 pounds and was now feeling more insecure of her body image than ever and looking for help. Slowly, Jillian walked her through her feelings and explained that the reason she was feeling so physically insecure is because she is now able to be rejected, and is afraid of that potential failure. Prior to losing the weight, the caller had been flying under the radar and had never even been in the dating scene, and now that her figure was attracting positive attention, she was not only thrown into the dating scene, but also eligible for all of the heartache and rejection that the dating scene often brings along with it. Suddenly, the caller was realizing that she was able to be rejected. Granted, she was also now eligible to completely rock it, but being thrown into this social perception was the primary cause of her new-found insecurity.
Initially, I found myself thinking that Jillian’s words were making a lot of sense, but I didn’t think that they applied to me. I am no longer overweight, I live a healthy lifestyle, and I enjoy being “in the game” with respect to my peers and social scene. However, as I thought about it more, I broadened my view on Jillian’s theory and realized that there are many places in my own life that I do choose to fly “under the radar” for fear of rejection and failure.  By not giving 100%, I create an automatic out for myself in these areas of life should things not go according to plan. While it is somewhat easy and not too painful to admit “I didn’t achieve Y, but that’s okay because I didn’t really focus too hard on X”, how hard (and scary) is it to say “I tried every way I could think of and gave everything I had to X, but I still didn’t achieve Y”. When Y is something that carries huge weight in your life, and involved some sacrifices and hard work to attempt, not achieving that goal is often a very tough concept to stomach.
So how can we overcome this fear of failure?
By measuring ourselves internally, as opposed to externally. What exactly does that look like? While that picture is different for every single person, for me it means that I determine my worth as a person. It means that I am strong, intelligent, loving, thoughtful and beautiful despite the outcomes of my efforts. When you no longer measure yourself by the things you achieve (or don’t achieve!), you no longer fear failure, because achievement does not determine your worth. And when you no longer fear failure, you no longer hold back from giving 100% to something that might seem a little crazy or daunting. And then something cool happens: the nature of hard work builds in a back-up feature, because the more committment and dedication you put into that crazy goal, the lower your chance of failure automatically becomes.
So that’s pretty cool right? Got it? Just to prove my point, I will leave you with a cheesy quote:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Thank you, FDR! And yes, I just winked.