Outflanking the fear of failure

Sept. 21, 2006

Dear Julie,

Basketball players who simply visualize making free throws improve as much as players who actually practice making free throws.

Jack Nicklaus says he ran a mind movie before every shot he ever took during his storied golf career.

Yet I doubt whether many weekend golfers bother to visualize their shots before making them. Fred Shoemaker, a writer of golf books, suggests the reason is that most of us are afraid of failure. If a shot we've visualized in our heads doesn't come off, we think we have flunked.

It's safer for our ego not to try.

Buddhist teacher and author Tara Brach calls the source of this fear "the trance of unworthiness," the state of mind that yields to the numbness of addictions.

Fear of failure can interfere with doing all manner of things: adopting a healthier lifestyle, getting the job we really want, creating the kind of relationship we want.

It sounds too easy. Visualize yourself already looking the way you want to look, visualize yourself already doing the work you want to do, visualize yourself already having the relationship you want to have.

So, none of us bothers with trying. None of us wants to try and fail.

We enumerate the reasons why something can't be done and in so doing we give "can't" the power that rightfully belongs to "can."

But succeeding is not any test. Trying is.

The fear of failure hides the creativity that blazes in all human beings. This spark yearns to be expressed. One study of an artist with Alzheimer's disease found that while her language, memory and attention abilities kept deteriorating, she was able to maintain the neural pathways traveled by her creative expression.

In psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, the need to make the most of our abilities is at the top of the pyramid.

Art is not an object, Frank Lloyd Wright said. It's a way of life.

So what are we to do with this fear? We all have that voice in our heads. The voice seems to want to help and protect us, but often it's self-critical and doubting. It's the voice that makes not trying seem to be for your own good.

Getting rid of that voice is impossible, Shoemaker says. But you can learn to ignore it. Treat those thoughts as if they were the wind, he says.

Meditation teaches the same principle. When thoughts arise, as they will, you simply return your focus to your breathing or a mantra.

Shoemaker teaches that choosing a future to live into endows the present with extraordinary possibilities. If we decide on a purpose for our golf swing -- say to play with freedom -- or a purpose for our lives -- say to live freely -- then fears and whatever else is inconsistent with that purpose have no chance of holding us back.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.