54. The Art of Being Too Scared to do Anything

‘À la recherche du temps perdu’, or ‘In Search of Lost Time’ by French novelist Marcel Proust is the longest book ever written. 3365 pages. 1.5 million words. 

Some effort.  

Though, and I appreciate this is a big shout, I reckon I could raise him.

If it came to writing a novel about my character flaws, it would probably make Proust's work look like The Hungry Caterpillar.

And one of my very many negative traits is that I naturally hate doing things that I’m not good at.

If I’m not instantly semi-decent at something, my immediate reaction is to throw my toys out the pram, quit, and never do that thing again. 

Yep, a real sign of maturity. 

Now, I’m sure there are a whole host of deep, psychological and generally fucked up reasons why, though I imagine one of those reasons is fairly obvious. 

A fear of failure. 

And over the years, this has been an unbelievably restrictive and broadly unhelpful trait in my life. In retrospect, Howard the Coward was probably a rather apt nickname growing up...

To be fair, I imagine this fear (the fear of failure, not the fear of nicknames) is a relatively common one.

Evolutionary wise it seems to make sense. It potentially, in as oversimplified a way possible, goes something like: 

Obviously, that’s just something I did using the sophisticated design software Google Docs, so there’s a high chance that it’s wildly inaccurate. However, based on the evolutionary psychology stuff that I’ve read/listened to, this is my understanding of a potential Darwinian chain of events. 

If this were the case, then over the course of 1000s of years, failure has basically been hard-wired into our survival-seeking brains to be something to be avoided at all costs.

And I actually don’t think that that’s necessarily a completely bad thing, as it can stop us doing stupid stuff.

The problem is that it can also stop us from doing stuff that we want to do, because we’re too scared to do it. Holla!

Though is it a fear of failure, or is it a fear of something else?

Author, Entrepreneur, and general Gym Bro Alex Hormozi makes what I think is an interesting and generally fair point.

He says that we’re not necessarily afraid of failing per se, but more afraid of what other people will say about us if we fail.

I think there’s truth in that. For example:

• It’s much worse to mumble our way through a presentation in front of a room full of people, than it is to forget the words when we’re practising alone in our living rooms 

• It’s much worse to cluelessly try and get our head around the new machine at the gym when the place is packed, than it is when the place is empty 

• It’s much worse to get trounced by our mates at a multi-player video game, than it is to lose to the computer when no one else is watching 

And so on. 

The actual activity or ‘failure’ is the same, it’s just the context that’s different. 

We don’t care when we arse something up when we’re by ourselves, we do when there’s other people around. 

This reframe of failure makes it a slightly different issue. 

It becomes less about the failure of a given thing, and more about other people’s opinions of us. 

Overvaluing other people’s opinions of us. Talk about another negative trait I could add to my own ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’. This has been another unbelievably restrictive and broadly unhelpful characteristic over the course of my life. 

Side note, that was actually one of the initial sub-benefits, and now one of the main reasons for doing this Blog and the Podcast; to basically try and care less about other people's opinions. For an update, it's still very much work in progress. 

On this point, and proactively trying to give less of a shit what people think of us, there’s a story that I love.

The specifics aren’t that important (mainly because I can’t remember them), but it’s about Cato, one of the Stoic GOATs. 

At the time, the done thing to do was wear a purple tunic (a piece of clothing, to save you a Google), and if you wore another colour, it was absolutely tragic. 

Kind of like if we kicked about today in one of those filthy V-neck tees from 2011. 

Though Cato, ever the cheeky boy, used to wear a blue tunic. 

The reason for this was to proactively work on not caring what others thought & desensitising himself to ridicule. I like it. 

On the topic of caring less about what others think, there are a couple of ideas that I think are great, and try to remember whenever I start to feel a little insecure (which yes, is a pretty frequent occurrence). 

Firstly, “At 20 you care what everyone thinks… at 40 you don’t care what other people think… and at 60 you realise they weren’t thinking about you all along”.

I can’t actually remember where I stole that from, but that aside, big fan.

It’s a similar thought to Derren Brown’s “you’ll stop caring what other people think of you when you realise how little they do”.

On this, when it comes to doing something that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable (which is most things haha), I do try and think about whether it’s the fear of failure that’s making me not want to do it, or actually of fear of the judgement of others (masquerading as a fear of failure)...

And a reminder that most people firstly don't care, and secondly are probably too busy worrying about other people's opinions of them to give us a second thought, is one that I always find fairly useful. 

And rather aptly on that point, I should probably get this posted...