I'm lying in bed. I hear Dave breathing softly next to me. Crickets chirp. An air conditioner clicks on, hums, and clicks off. A dog barks. So I roll to the left, and then to the right. Nothing. The world outside sleeps quietly through the night while a war rages inside my head.
The big culprit in my sleeplessness is stress. I never considered myself a worrier, but I think the tendency to freak out about things I can't control is growing. And just like in "I Dreamed A Dream," when those tigers come at night, their thunderous voices keep me awake. Anxiety over money (lack of!), my future, and inevitable confrontations with dysfunctional people laces itself into my brain, tying up rational thoughts.
Sometimes when Dave travels, my fears manifest themselves into crazy Manson-like scenarios. I'll sleep with two phones next to my bed sometimes. I know it's irrational, but it doesn't matter. It's where my brain goes, and I've got a hard time stopping it.
Tonight is different, though. The normal stuff is still there - dysfunctional people in and money out. Tonight my future is there, waiting to be acknowledged, and I'm afraid to look.
As I may have mentioned, I've gone back to school to become a personal trainer. Combining my love of athletics with my desire to improve the lives of others seemed like a great direction to go. It is. I know it is. But the process of learning reminds me how much I don't know. When I look boldly at all the information I have yet to acquire, I start to ask the same debilitating questions I've asked for years. Will I be any good? Am I a fraud? Will anyone really take me seriously? What if I fail? What if it doesn't work?
I know I'm not the only one who asks these questions. My life strategy in the past has been to play it extremely safe. I bartended. I could carry on a conversation with relatively bright people, do my job, and go home. At work, I never challenged myself. I remained in a position with no advancement, no pay increases, no ability to move forward for nearly a decade. While I loved what I did, I knew always that when I turned out the lights and got in bed, those nasty tigers would come. I would wonder if I was wasting my brain, wasting my God-given potential on an intellectually dissatisfying job I loved. Did I take the easiest, safest route? Why didn't I put myself out there and take a chance?
The decision to leave the safety of the restaurant industry was not mine, but I accept it. Now, well over a year later, I have no choice but to take chances. I'm out of options. I have no desire to go back to restaurants, nor do I have any inclination to use my degree. Instead, I'm heading in a new direction doing something that I know I'll love. But those same fears nags me. Only this time, I don't have any safety net. The part of me that knows I can do it gets squashed by the baseless anxiety over whether or not I'll be able to assimilate information and pass it along effectively, whether I'll help people lose weight and feel good about themselves without getting injured, or whether I can even get a client.
The thing I resent most about these worries, these irrational worries, is how much time I let them consume. My brain is polluted by things I don't even need to consider. For instance, "What if I fail?" Well, since failure is simply not an option, I don't even need to consider it. The anxieties that accompany the failure question should also be disregarded.
Unfortunately, simply disregarding the fear of failure is not so easy. If I really want to understand my fear, I must understand what about failure really frightens me. Honestly, I am afraid of having to tell people, "It didn't work out." I fear that those who may not like me will take satisfaction in my lack of success. I fear disappointing myself and letting down my family. I fear not being able to "hack" a career, because I've never really had one.
Writing those words makes the whole problem seem so benign... Interesting.
My eyes are drooping and my heartbeat has returned to normal. I'm going to try to go to sleep, hopefully worry-free. My final thought is this. If you've ever felt imprisoned by your fear of failure, ask yourself what "not failing" really is. Is it making a lot of money? Is it getting married and having a family? Is it a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day? If you had those things, do you think you would feel like a success? For a moment, consider your role models. Do you think they are successes in life? And then, do you think they believe they are successes in life? We're all human. Flawed and imperfect, but beautiful and full of potential. The standards by which we measure our own success are vastly different than those by which we measure the success of others. Be gentle with yourself. And be brave. Maybe the question we really need to ask is, "What if I succeed?"
No comments:
Post a Comment
I like people who say nice things.