I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole fear-of-success thing. I’ve never considered myself to be a particularly fearful person. In fact, I’ll admit to having scoffed at people for being ruled by fear.
Not me, I said. I go forth into the world without fear, exploring places that only the fearless dare go.
Turns out, I’ve got my own personal brand of fear, and I never realized how strong it is and how much it’s been holding me back.
That’s an inconvenient blow to the beliefs I’ve always held of myself. 🙂
One of my big goals is to be a professional performer. In order to achieve that goal, I have to be in a place that has an abundance of educational opportunities, audition opportunities, and performing opportunities. Obviously. Now, there’s a certain city that has all of those things in spades. (It’s not New York. Not yet, anyway. Baby steps!) However, the downside (and upside) to that city is that it happens to be filled to the brim with my friends. College friends, high school friends–they’ve migrated there in droves. Having friends around is awesome in terms of comfort and fun.
However, I’ve been living the past few years in a world that’s totally removed from my friends and family. My big fat failures have happened in remote parts of Central America and Asia and Europe, where no one is witness to them but me and a bunch of strangers who couldn’t care less. One of my big fat fears is that if I move to this city and go after my dreams–like, REALLY go after them–there will be a big audience to see me fail. An audience made of people I respect and adore, and whose opinions matter greatly to me. What will they think of me if I fail at being a normal person? When I can’t just run away to another country?
So that’s the situation. I’ve been in transit for years, and now I have to move somewhere. Basically, there are two choices before me: 1) a small town with no opportunities but a very, VERY safe and comfortable atmosphere in which I know I won’t fail, and 2) The city where I’ll be on display but have every opportunity to go after what I want. I’ve been going back and forth between these two options, wrestling with a very uncomfortable inner debate. The small town is safe. It’s home. The big city is scary.
This inner war is worse because I can’t just GO–not with the holidays and prior commitments where I am now. In the past, my biggest, scariest decisions have been made on the spur of the moment, and I’m off onto the next adventure before I have time to be scared about it. A very effective strategy for someone who is terrified of success! No thinking. Just doing.
So every time I decide to move to this city, I’m excited for awhile and then the fear kicks in. Except it doesn’t manifest itself as fear. Oh no, it’s far sneakier than that. It comes up in the form of doubts–will I have enough money to make the move? Will I find a place to live that I can afford? Will I fail before I even get started? And it comes up in the form of discomfort–but I NEED the comfort of home for a while before I can have the courage to move on to something bigger. I don’t have the strength to do it right now. It comes up in the form of rationalization–but if I go home, I can live cheaply, take lessons, get back into the performing groove, and THEN move on to the bigger challenge with confidence.
Now, the rationalization sounds perfectly logical. Those things are all true. But am I just putting off the real action, the real things that will get me to my goals? Or do I really need to go home to heal? Last year was a really, really hard one, and I haven’t quite recovered emotionally. I feel like the parts of myself are still scattered about.
It’s a whole different story, but I had a boyfriend who treated me terribly. He cheated on me, he objectified me, and I was hurt so badly that I literally was just holding on to the strength I needed to get from one day to the next. I literally had no emotional power to make the decision I knew I needed to make–to get out of that toxic relationship. When I finally mustered up the power, it was awesome. But I’m still healing and I don’t quite feel whole yet. (Somehow, bouncing around the world does not make you whole. Imagine that! ha)
So even now, writing it all out, I’m still not sure of what to do. I understand that fear is holding me back and causing me to procrastinate. Running away to another country would be the highest level of self-sabotage. Moving to the city would be a step in the right direction. Three months at home is somewhere in the middle. The thing I need to decide is, do I go all out and just go for it, or do I take it at a pace that’s more comfortable? Will those three months set me back? Probably not. I’ll still be advancing. Will it slow me down? A little.
Oh, dear.
Fear Free Year 