Is The Fear of Success Holding You Back?
Failure is Common. Success is Rare. Why? My Q & A with Valentina Petrova.
My travels led to Barstow and the Mojave Desert last weekend. Roaming solo for the first time in forever. Enjoy some of the images I encountered along the way.
The Harvey House is a local historical landmark, and I will be writing a post on that in the future. Using my tripod and a 10-second delay ensures images that will surprise me. Like the one above.
de·sier·to
-ta,
adjective
despoblado
deserted, uninhabited
desolado
desolate, bleak
masculine
desert, wasteland
predicar en el desierto
figurative
to cry in the wilderness
Wow! That’s eerily insightful. Combined with what appears to be my shadow leaving the scene, I might be allowed to have a moment of self-concern. But nah. I’m good.
I am struck, though, by my shadow literally walking in the opposite direction of my standing-still body.
My soul in motion while my self just stands there. What a metaphor.
Housekeeping Duties…
If you are a regular around here you might notice the changes happening. If you are a new friend doing the “let me read this shit first” thing, welcome. I hope you like “this shit.”
We are rapidly closing in on the end of the year. And the end of my first year on Substack. I am so glad we are here together. It has helped.
Changes happen all the time. To us and around us. All we have to do is just notice it. That is the first step to self-awareness.
This post is all about changes. If you have been following me or my collaborator-in-crime Valentina Petrova, you know all about my first collaboration effort with her.
If you just stumbled upon this post, that ‘s awesome! Here are a few links that will put together the storyline and have you all caught up in a few minutes.
Does America Need Psychosynthesis?
Beet Smoothies with a Soundtrack
The prompt for this project was reading a few pieces by Valentina that resonated deeply within me. The first one I read was How your attachment style affects your relationships.
Have I ever mentioned my fondness for rabbit-holes? This was a great one to fall into. If you don’t know your attachment style, like I didn’t, it is worth knowing.
Just in case you missed it, these two posts by Valentina are a fantastic jumping off point.
Tricks your mind plays causing you to misbehave - Part I
Tricks your mind plays causing you to misbehave - Part 2
Thinking one way but always gravitating to the opposite.
I recognized the descriptions of personality styles and the resulting behavioral expressions intimately. I easily attached the poor decision-making I employed at critical junctions in my life to survival skills I learned in childhood.
What attracted me to this topic and Valentina’s writing was that I had intuitively discovered this in myself, but had no intelligent way to describe it. I lacked the words to say what it was that had this effect on my thought process. Thinking one way but always gravitating to the opposite.
I think the hardest aspect of childhood trauma is the intersectional difficulty to discuss it between generations. Both for the parent and the child.
As a child that survived an extremely chaotic upbringing, I am mindful that my complaints about it now come off as hollow excuses for bad behavior.
As a parent of children that also made it through their own traumatic childhoods, I understand the pain those lived-experiences cause to this day. Labels like good parent/bad parent melt away in the sunlight of self-awareness.
I ask the question: Did my children succeed in spite of me?
The cost of wisdom in old age seems to be paid in shedded regrets. Or maybe it’s shredded regrets. In either case, the baggage and the burden are the same. Maybe there is some power to be found in shredding versus shedding.
My recent journey to center myself forced some new concepts into my consciousness and upon serious introspection, I cannot deny their importance in arriving at this point.
To better understand the jumping off point from my angle, check out these posts that pre-dated this project. I think they primed the pump, so to say...
Vulnerability: Cost-Benefit Analysis - The foibles of human nature and the desire for perfection
Be Vulnerable - Wreck a Car, Not a Life
Asking an Expert: Why the hell did I do that?
Full Disclosure: This is the first interview I have ever done, much less published. Valentina is a super-gracious person, and deftly handled my shotgun-approach to stream-of-consciousness emailing!
It was conducted via email, which certainly helped calm my nerves. Understand, as this is happening in real-time, I am struggling with the feelings articulated in the questions below.
I almost called it off for some silly excuse, like my platform isn’t ready for a guest-write interview. Saying it out loud and now reading it makes it sound even sillier than it is.
What you see in this exchange is my attempt to identify the emotion without immediately dismissing it as bothersome. It’s obvious now to me that I was very comfortable rejecting those emotions out of hand in the past.
The questions are as revealing as the answers. The impact of Valentina’s writing on me as a first impression holds up to the examination we’ve just gone through.
Ric: Is my self-diagnosed fear of success actually a fear of commitment?
Valentina: Everyone wants a “this-or-that” answer from a psychologist. But if I give it to you, will it really help? After all, you had to learn how to ride a bicycle, not just be told what it is. The value is in the process of learning just as much, if not more than knowing the answer. It could be because we cherish the labor of love or because the work it takes to sort it out becomes part of our DNA, while every intellectual understanding resides in our short-term memory until forgotten.
I am not a fan of diagnosing anyone because I don’t like putting people in a box. The diagnosis itself can become a crutch and a limitation. We tend to want to live up to it and often use it as an excuse for falling short of our own expectations, goals, and dreams. If you had cancer, you’d want to know. If your appendix must be removed, that’s a diagnosis you absolutely need. However, we are all amalgamations in progress when it comes to personal development, behavior, and character. The fact that you ask the question means you’re on your way to figuring it out. Perhaps, it will occur to you that success requires commitment, and then you’d ask more questions, such as “what is success to me,” and “what is commitment?” Then, you might ask, “What does a successful commitment look like?”
It’s definitely a good rabbit hole to fall into.
Ric: Is the trepidation I am currently feeling about our collaboration tied into that? I can feel the emotional currents intensify as I write in real time about this.
Valentina: I don’t know. I am not in your head. New things can make us nervous. You’ve been sharing your thoughts with your readers, and now you invite me to look at them and tell you (and your readers) what I think about them. If you feel the possibility of being judged and compared, it may make you nervous. But if you believe that your work has value and it’s helpful and necessary to you and others, the excitement could be unsettling.
Ric: Is reaching out to you and completing this project a potential healing process?
Valentina: That’s up to you.
Ric: The fear of failure is widely known and over-reported. All human beings suffer from this phobia. Then we collect all of our own unique fears and phobias to connect and complicate our nervous system.
We adapt and create work-arounds. The survival skills necessary for childhood survival are less reliable in adulthood.
But we plow on, relying on them to navigate a complicated landscape full of emotional potholes. Adolescence was acceptable, but only because I made it on MY terms after a while. Nobody checked us. Or even checked in on us.
The effectiveness of those skills decline on a steep downhill angle the older we get. I am living proof. Let us now explore the hows and whys we never ask ourselves.
Valentina: Consider the possibility that fear of failure exists because we worry about our worthiness. It comes down to wanting to be good enough and loved, and somehow failure translates into not being good enough and not worthy of love. Why do some people feel more energized when things don’t work out, more enthusiastic to try again, and others shrivel up and die a little on the inside? The clues reside in the past and the meaning we’ve derived from our experiences. Not all people derive the same meaning from the same experience…
conclusions and musings...
Obviously, the attachment style that inhabits my persona is built-in. So is yours. I’ve always known it, but just never knew its name. Now I do.
The desire is to just compartmentalize it. Along with the grocery list and dry-cleaning duties. The brain has remarkable capabilities to disassociate from pain.
Here is my style. And following that is the style that seems to have attracted me for the past 47 years. I always knew I had a type.
The Avoidant – Dismissive Attachment Style
This style is seen in people desiring a high level of independence, who feel self-sufficient, do not need close relationships, have a few friends, and mind their own business. They distrust others, make a great effort to distance themselves from emotionally unstable situations, and avoid being vulnerable. They have high self-esteem and a high level of self-efficacy. They believe that they do not need close relationships and lack interest in forming them. They prefer to invest their time and energy in themselves rather than others, spending a disproportionate amount of effort on personal development, skill-building, and providing for themselves. They do not believe that other people can deliver emotional support. They mostly see emotionally needy people as draining. They do not search or need approval from others. They deliberately avoid forming close bonds. This is why they love fleeting and casual relationships, one-night stands, and friends-with-benefits types of situations. They are good at hiding their feelings and prone to minimizing or dismissing the feelings of others, also good at keeping secrets and often end relationships to regain independence.
This attachment style is seen in people with avoidant- dismissive and otherwise unavailable and rejecting primary caregivers - mothers who leave their children unattended and only meet their most basic physical needs without being responsive to their emotional and psychological needs. In such situations, children learn that they can’t rely on the primary attachment figure and learn to self-soothe. They learn to stay close enough to be safe but not so close as to be rejected. One way to do this is to maintain physical proximity but emotional distance.
Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment Style
This is marked by seeking a high level of intimacy, constant connection, grasping and needing reassurance, approval, and validation. People with this attachment style feel helpless and seek dependency. At the same time, they have lower self-esteem and a less positive view of themselves and their partner. Yet, they consider their partner to be their “better half.” They are highly emotionally expressive and experience separation anxiety and worry excessively. They tend to overreact and overthink situations. Their thoughts trigger actions that lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, which leave them validated in their sense of defenselessness, fear of abandonment, and estimations of how much others care. The attention, care, availability, and responsiveness of the partner is the remedy they seek. Yet, they find themselves attracted to Dismissive-Avoidant partners and re-enact the traumas of their childhood. They crave to be liked, so often they are people pleasers, avoiding conflict at times, yet seeking confirmation, acceptance, and validation to the point of causing conflict.
Light Switch Moment
Asking for and getting the answers to my questions now creates another potential friction point. They make sense. To not act upon them would be kinda stupid. And self-regressing.
The thing about focusing inward is that it strips away the bullshit. A coach I know calls it the Light Switch Moment. The one and only time when the self has the opportunity to honestly assess the day.
What you tell yourself usually comes true. The self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon. Or the story of my life as I call it. The lies we tell ourselves usually get acted out. And eventually exposed.
I made concrete steps in my life this week to share painful information with close loved ones. It was my light switch moment. I almost chickened out. But after it was done and over, I had the best night’s sleep in many years.
Sadly, I realize the information was hurtful and surprising to others. And I was informed of that. But the cards are face up on the table. There is plenty of pain to go around.
Much of it is caused by my inattention to emotions. I ran an emotional attention deficit for most of my life. I think 57 years is long enough.
I can’t meet you where you are if you won’t tell me where you stand.
I know where I stand now. Doesn’t mean I am a better person. Or that I am cured. I just know how it feels to finally be honest. With myself. It feels good. I suggest doing it. The rest is just going to have to figure itself out.
Trust yourself to know yourself,
Ric
Recipe for Success
I never cooked Humble Pie or ate Crow. Before now. The supreme irony of my life given the numbers of cars I wrecked and bridges I’ve burned is that God still puts me in a car driving over a bridge. You wanna ride shotgun?
He sure has a sense of humor. Or doom! Wracking my brain to decide what something I could make to soothe the soul and satisfy the stomach.
Here’s the deal: a friend asked me to visit Barstow. I love to cook. A challenge was laid down to make a meal using only ingredients currently in the house. Challenge accepted. Challenge failed.
That’s the lesson here, friends. Stop killing yourself to live.
Well, here’s the thing. I made some outstanding Chorizo Nachos from stuff I bought. I forgot to take any pictures at all. Dammit!
So, I made a quick throw together last night when I got home and actually snapped some pics. Took a chicken breast, seasoned with Turmeric, Worcestershire Sauce, salt and pepper. Super easy.
Sautéed it in some bacon grease that is always in a jar by the stove. I didn’t want to fuss with veggies or frozen. I just wanted fast and easy. Story of my life, right?
I found a can of whole baby potatoes from a Food Bank trip (still a big need for some of us - click here to help). Sliced carrots and green onions, seasoned salt and black pepper, Bacon Grease - I know, but it tastes so damn good!)
Toss a few baby spinach leaves on the plate, Green Goddess dressing, and Voila - dinner in about 20 minutes. Big taste. Little effort. Enjoy.
"What you tell yourself usually comes true. The self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon. Or the story of my life as I call it. The lies we tell ourselves usually get acted out. And eventually exposed."
This is powerful.
I enjoyed all of this. Thanks for sharing with me, Ric. ❤️