Fear of failure

Sheikh Eras Sumreen
“There is no success like failure and failure is no success at all”
The depth of this famous saying by Bob Dylan is so intense that the more you try to research and understand, the more you find yourself tangled in knots of different tapestries of definitions of success and failure created by our society. How would anyone define success and failure? I have never encountered a single precise and accurate definition of these terms. Every single person in this world has his/her own recipe of success and failure. I have yet not reached that critical point in my life where I can formulate the difference between success and failure in my mind for I have yet not faced a major failure in my life that would teach me a lesson about success. It is a very common saying that failure is the stepping stone to success. Every successful man/woman has his/her own stories of failures behind that success. Despite all of this the fear of failure for every individual in this world is fatal. The F word is the first thing that came to my mind when I started working on this essay. The question of “What if I fail” is the most constant thing looming behind our mind in our whole life. This is what I find most enthralling that has motivated me to write this essay.
Every task, major or minor, starts with the fear of failure. I have just spent 20 years of my life in this world out of which only the first few years of my life have been spent without the fear of failing in life. I believe that this is the case with almost all the human beings. A child can hardly ever learn to walk, without making constant and genuine efforts in the process of tumbling and falling down numerous times. His/ her failure never dissuades him/ her to stop standing again. The tenacity in the child’s determination lies in making any number of attempts to stand up and walk whatever be the pain or fear of fall. As children, we are naturally curious, inquisitive, and enthusiastic and ready to try new things. When they don’t work out we immediately move on and try something else. We don’t waste time or emotions distressing about what didn’t work, we simply forget and continue trying something else. But then something terrible strikes us. We learn that failure is unacceptable and are rebuked, humiliated and mocked for it. During our early childhood we were never ever afraid of consequences but as soon as a child enters school, the fear of failure is instilled to his core. In this world of competition and rat race, everyone wants to be number one. Accepting failure is considered a weakness. The perception of failure and success by our society is what needs to be changed to overcome this fear of failure.
It is an unknown fact that the failure of one person might be success of some other person. Success and failure are actually two sides of a same coin .Success is impossible without obstacles and setbacks. The more you fail, the more you can analyse the things in real perspective and hone the depths of your talents. There are infinite stories of failures of great men and women but my favourite story is of great scientist Thomas Edison who failed thousand times before inventing a light bulb. What he had to say about his failure was “I have not failed 1,000 times; I have successfully found 1,000 ways that will not make a light bulb.”This is the approach which everyone should have for failures in life. Whenever we fail, we feel a ton of emotions ranging from humiliation to dejection and fear. It is natural to feel these emotions but to let these emotions control your actions and cloud your conscience is not the solution. When we fail, our egos take a beating. The ego wants us to be right but to accept that we are wrong and learn from our experience is the sign of a winner. We should rejuvenate ourselves and come back with more vigour and zeal never losing hope.
I have never faced a major setback in life till now. The stories of my little failures are however the most cherished moments of my life because they have helped me to become what I am today. I am a MBBS student heading towards a life where the price of failure is too big. In our profession, failures can cost lives of innocent people. However, this does not mean that we should be afraid of it. We cannot afford fear because it seriously affects our performance and can be fatal for the patient. As medical students we fail in every second of everyday, we make mistakes, we misdiagnose a number of cases, but all of this is what will make us better doctors in the future. If we do not try due to fear of failure, we would be playing with the lives of the patients. So, yes, I am ready for failures and setbacks and ready to learn from my mistakes now because in my future making a mistake can become a crime. My inspiration is Dr Ben Carson who was not the brightest student and failed many times in life but today he is the best Neurosurgeon of the century. His story “Gifted Hands” is the perfect story of failures and success.
I have learnt in my life that if you focus on negative things, the world becomes cynical. Positivity attracts positivity as stated by the law of attraction. So when you think positively, failure will become the stepping stone to success. Even if you walk on “The road not taken”, all the obstacles and fears will become the keys to the impending success. Our greatest glory lies in welcoming failure rather than thinking of it as an unwanted companion. Without it, where would we be?
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