"Fear of trying is fear of failure."
That's the quote I had hanging on my wall for all of 2023. When working at my desk, every time I lifted my head, I made eye contact with those words.
As a pianist and a golfer, I've had a lot of close encounters with fear. I remember feeling paralyzed sitting in the waiting room of Carnegie Hall, thunder pulsing in my temples. I've felt adrenaline flowing through me before my last golf state qualifier or in front of the microphone in All Classical Portland Radio Station's recording studio, wondering, what should I say? How should I introduce myself? What if she asks me a question I don't know how to answer?
Every time I felt that familiar sensation of apprehension prickling over me, I would tell myself, "Fear of trying is fear of failure. That's all it is."
From a young age, we've often been conditioned to believe that fear is a negative emotion; it's something we should eradicate so we can perform to our highest potential. I remember googling "how to get over stage fright," "how to get over my nervousness," and even "meditations to calm myself before a performance."
I don't remember if any of these techniques actually helped me, but what I've come to realize is that fear is an incredibly good and powerful emotion. Fear is exactly what makes us evolve; it makes us grow and pushes us to new heights. Fear is a sign that you're changing, and you're expanding your comfort zone. Fear is a sign that you should try it out rather than avoid it and push it off until later. On the other hand, anger and indifference, not fear, is the real warning sign that you should wait or reconsider pursuing something.
On the first day of 2024, I replaced the quote over my desk with a new one:
"The deeper the fear, the deeper the love."
Of course, that doesn't always hold true, for in no way am I madly in love with spiders. However, every time I read that quote, I'm reminded that my fear of an upcoming competition simply shows me that it's something that matters deeply to me. It's something that I've worked hard for so I should just try it out without worrying about possibility of failure.
And on that same topic of failure, I'd like to share a quote from my current read, 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think.
"Anything other than ideal is not failure. It's life."
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