Fear of Failure

I am a perfectionist, this is well known, and for your knowledge I’ll outline some mistakes that I’ve made in connection with this.

The fear of failure:

It got to the point where I wouldn’t even play games that I knew I had some chance of losing at. I’d rather not participate at all than lose at playing it. To be fair, this is a valuable entrepreneurial skill, but in life it’s less of a good thing.

I think, if I could pick anything, these examples would be what I consider my biggest regrets in life. I missed out on a lot of things simply because I was afraid of losing at it. If I could go back, I would just participate and have fun doing it.

In grade six I had a “magic” pen that could write invisible ink and then you could use this other pen to scribble over it and reveal the message. I loved the idea, as a young boy, the stealth, the messages, the codes… it was part of the little boy spy dream everyone has. In any event, I was so enamored with saving the pen for important things (it had a rather small ink tank) that I never used it. I kept it available always, but I needed a very good reason to use it. Then, one day, I tried to write something and it had dried up. I had left it too long, and now it would never be used. If I had just used it while I could…

In my personal experience the fear of losing at something should not define you playing at all. Go for it, if you lose you lose, but at least you enjoyed the game.

“Better to have loved and lost than ne’er to have loved at all.”

People always look at you funny when you’re standing in the middle of the road taking pictures of ‘nothing’, but sometimes I think these are the photos that say the most about life around you.