Redefining success
Mar. 22nd, 2019 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesWorking on my fear of rejection and ridicule is a big part of my lifelong project of managing anxiety and self-consciousness. I have a hard time making applications or submitting work because I keep thinking I have no chance of success and will only look out of place. Past success and positive feedback seem to have only limited effect on mitigating this fear.
I have weird and idiosyncratic exceptions such as writing essays and, get this, public speaking. Both can make me nervous depending on the subject matter and my level of perceived competence/preparedness, but the reaction seems more rational than what I get for things like applications and submissions. Maybe the difference is a simple one of being inside or outside my comfort zone, and I just need more practice in broadening my sphere of comfort.(1)
This is why I'm trying to reorient myself to seeing failure and rejection as success. These outcomes are not success in the specific endeavor I tried for, of course, but they are successes in my continuing efforts to be more comfortable trying more new things and putting myself out there.
This doesn't mean I'll inflict substandard material on people, but rather that I'll have a new retort for the voice in my head that says anything I do in that area is substandard because I suck. Instead of trying to persuade it (and there is no reasoning with it, as you may know) I can tell it, "Hell yeah, I suck! And I am going to fail EPICALLY and there's nothing you can do to stop me."
So my question to myself becomes not, "what can I succeed at?" but rather "what can I fail at?" and I find that tremendously freeing. It helps me reach for new possibilities and get out of my own way.
1. Association, or lack thereof, with past trauma/humiliation and embeddedness in self-worth probably have something to do with it, too. Understanding my own triggers is another part of the work I'm always doing. I find it much harder than the comparatively quick and successful, though still painful, work of overcoming my violent rage triggers. Fear seems to be a much more fraught and complicated issue for me than anger, and I suspect it's also much more deeply wired into biology and genetics.
I have weird and idiosyncratic exceptions such as writing essays and, get this, public speaking. Both can make me nervous depending on the subject matter and my level of perceived competence/preparedness, but the reaction seems more rational than what I get for things like applications and submissions. Maybe the difference is a simple one of being inside or outside my comfort zone, and I just need more practice in broadening my sphere of comfort.(1)
This is why I'm trying to reorient myself to seeing failure and rejection as success. These outcomes are not success in the specific endeavor I tried for, of course, but they are successes in my continuing efforts to be more comfortable trying more new things and putting myself out there.
This doesn't mean I'll inflict substandard material on people, but rather that I'll have a new retort for the voice in my head that says anything I do in that area is substandard because I suck. Instead of trying to persuade it (and there is no reasoning with it, as you may know) I can tell it, "Hell yeah, I suck! And I am going to fail EPICALLY and there's nothing you can do to stop me."
So my question to myself becomes not, "what can I succeed at?" but rather "what can I fail at?" and I find that tremendously freeing. It helps me reach for new possibilities and get out of my own way.
1. Association, or lack thereof, with past trauma/humiliation and embeddedness in self-worth probably have something to do with it, too. Understanding my own triggers is another part of the work I'm always doing. I find it much harder than the comparatively quick and successful, though still painful, work of overcoming my violent rage triggers. Fear seems to be a much more fraught and complicated issue for me than anger, and I suspect it's also much more deeply wired into biology and genetics.
