Hard work is hard. If you think you're doing hard work and yet you haven't thought of quitting, you're not doing hard work. If you haven't thought of failure and how easy it would be to turn out the light and go to bed, to take care of it in the morning, or some distant morning after you've had some 'time to restore yourself' you're not doing hard work. Hard work is not done in one day, and getting started the next day is the hardest part of any of it. The path to the second excuse is laid with the first excuse and there is no good first excuse for something that you really want to do. When you want something, resilience becomes the only choice. It is a de facto state rather than something to become. You will be driven by your end goal over all other concerns. Resilience is the ability to be taken back by reality wearing down on you and yet lean in harder and push forward until you either fail, or succeed. Either are incredibly rewarding goals.
I have a theory that if you work that hard to never reach your goal, maybe you don't actually want the goal in the first place. I mean, not that you should try once, find an excuse, decide you don't want it, and stop. (Though giving up that easily would corroborate my point, I think.) But if you find yourself constantly stopped by 'excuses,' I'd reassess whether what you're going after is something you really want.
Exactly. When you fall down and fail, whether or not you lean in and try harder again is completely dependent on how hard you will have to work in the future weighed against that goal. If all you want is that goal, and nothing else matters then you'll go after it until you realize whether or not your best is good enough. At that point though, at least you know what your best is.
I've been down that road, and it's a destructive way to think of things. Granted, sometimes a little destruction is necessary, but most often it worked out badly for me. You see, it's not that I'm not interested: it's that I'm afraid of failure, and by god, I've never admitted it so many times before. What I forget at such moments is that I WANT IT, and that I'm not going for it is MY OWN FAULT. I fail myself because I'm terrified of the possibility of not succeeding, even if I enjoy the journey. Some things are only dreams, and I don't really want them. Many people want to be rock stars, but not many want to become them through hard work and many hours of preparation and repetition. Then, there are things I really want, and because I want them hard, I'm afraid that I might not get it (the inverse wish motivation effect, if you wish). It's nothing more than learned helplessness - I haven't even tried it yet, how can I know if I'll fail? - but it's something to lose, nonetheless, and this will take time and effort. Thank you for reminding me of that.
Another thing I have learned is that there seem to be ranks of "success" and "failures," and that if you aim for a big potential "success/failure," all the other targets you are shooting at pale in comparision. For instance as I've mentioned I am applying to MFA programs this fall. I am also, as I usually do, continuing to submit my writing for potential publication at various lit mags around the everywhere. I get rejected for publication a lot more than accepted and sometimes that sucks and sometimes it sucks more. Like the time I got a rejection back 2 hours after I sent in my stuff. But you know what? I'm applying for MFAs now, and I'm terrified. And all of a sudden all my publication submissions seem like small change in comparison to the weight of the MFA programs and their pending success/failures. I'm not saying that's great, haha. I guess what I am saying is there is always a bigger fish. Once you feel like you are used to one arena you will find there is another one you want to conquer and it will be just as terrifying and nerve-wracking as this one was, when you climbed into it the first time.
While it may be helpful to try to frame your fear of failure in terms of size (small failures, large failures) the fact of the matter is today's large failure will be tomorrow's small failure. There will always be a big scary potential failure you are working on. Sometimes seeing that what you were afraid of, is really small in comparison to something else, helps you realize relativity, and be less afraid of the small failures. That helps one be resilient, I think. But also, there will always be potential for and fear of failure. Right now your fear is nebulous, and we all want you to overcome it, yourself included. And I hope you will. But after that, there will probably be another fear, which you will also have to overcome. I don't think anyone ever truly overcomes their fear of failure. It's just that, as one gains mastery, the potential failures change. Some day you won't be afraid of starting to write - but you will be afraid the critics will tear your book apart. Or you won't make back your advance. Etc. I guess that is what I am going for.
I see what you mean now, and I think it's fair. I think that the synthesis of our ideas on fear of failure is the closest to correct: that we will overcome one level of fear, to meet another, and to overcome that, to meet even greater one, and so on. Thank you for sharing this.