Oral East Africa>Overcoming fear and procrastination At the hut of the story

Written by Florence Riako Anam

A few weeks back a friend shared a loss they had experienced because they procrastinated and missed an important deadline. When I probed, my friend shared that they also struggled to complete tasks generally because she spends a lot of time pondering how to begin or start their tasks or assignments.

“Every time I want to begin any task or project, I suddenly feel anxious, like something bad will happen, like I will fail and be a disappointment, then I get scared. So, I leave it” she explained.

I was immediately reminded of the many times this experience had crippled my own progress or even made me shy to try for new or challenging experiences not only at work but in other aspects of my life.

Chronic fear particularly fear of failure also known as atychiphobia, is an irrational and persistent fear of failing. This fear can stem from a number of sources and is often associated with perfectionism.

Common signs of fear of failure include anxiety, avoidance,helplessnes and powerlessness. In some extreme cases,one may experience physical symptoms including rapid heart rate, chest tightness, trembling, dizziness, lightheadedness, sweating, and digestive problems.

Read also: The Adulting epidemic

A while back I shared how an experience of impostor syndrome made me lose my voice. During this period, I would be very silent in meetings or shied away from taking on any tasks that would make me visible. Even though I had so much to contribute to any given discussion I didn’t believe I was smart enough to speak up.

Every time I tried, I felt a lump on my throat. I just couldn’t speak up. I noticed this pattern more and more and would beat myself up for letting myself down by not speaking up. Has this happened to you?

Fear convinces us that we’re not ready or capable often making us believe we need to wait until we are ‘ready’ or ‘have that degree’ or ‘have enough money’ or ‘be more prepared’. The truth is there will never be a time when we do not fear or aren’t scared especialy when we are about to do something out of our comfort zone.

Brianna West from her book the ‘mountain is you; transforming self-sabotage into self-mastery’ identifies chronic fear as one of the many triggers that create patterns of self-sabotage and advice that “the only true way to get over chronic fear is actually to get through it. Instead of trying to battle, resist and avoid what we cannot control, we can learn to simply shrug and say if it happens it happens”.

I overcame my own fear of failure one evening when I got home from a week’s travel and was washing my hands. The meeting was one of those hard ones and as was usual in that time, I was self-criticizing about how much more I should have participated and did not. When I turned on the water tap, out came the brownish grey water.

I observed the brownish water clear out and make way for the clear water and immediately thought to myself, what If I decided to be like this tap? Never caring what amount of brownish water, I need to get out of me, knowing I must do it to get to the clear water. All I would need to do was just persist on keeping the water flowing right?

That evening, I made the plan to overcome my fear of failure. I reckoned all I needed to do was open my tap (mouth) and say something (pour out water). Chances are that the first water out of my tap would be brownish, meaning I would have to contend with saying some very not so smart things, appear stupid for a period. Yet, if I just kept my tap opened long enough, I would get to the clear water and say some smart people things.

There’s a quote by author Glennon Doyle that says, “If you can’t beat fear, then just do it scared”. Here’s three ways to build your ‘do it scared’ muscle

Three Little Birds

Flip the story:
Every time you think of the many ways your plans or the outcome could go wrong, ask yourself, what if you succeed? Really what if you are successful, are you ready for that? This thinking helps to create a different mindset.

Adopt a beginner’s mindset:
Refer to the tap and brownish water story above. Beginners are open to learning; you do not have to have it right the first try or time. Have the curiosity to learn and the humility to fail.

On here you also get to learn the valuable lessons of failure particularly in building your own resilience to keep trying.

Talk to someone you trust:
nothing beats sharing your problem with someone you trust. People have a way of seeing how bigger than your problem you are, and the good ones let you know this every time you are in doubt.

Remember, everyone experiences fear. We all do, and we must then take turns to lift each other out of the fear pool once in a while. Speak to someone.

I must admit that getting through the ‘not being smart’ moments of my ‘do it scared’ journey wasn’t easy. I was embarrassed, even worried sometimes when I saw my colleague’s confusion whenever I spoke.

Mostly, I hated that I was failing, I could see the dismissive looks on the faces of the people in the room, which didn’t make it any easy, but I kept my ‘tap’ opened and got brave and confident the more I spoke. It was worth it in the end. This has since been how I approach a lot of things in my life.