Fear of failure

Last night I had a young diver so overcome by fear they were basically paralyzed. They couldn’t get themselves to do anything more than just cry. We were trying to do a simple back fall in from the three meter spring board and they were so overcome by fear that nothing would get them to go.

I asked her why she was afraid of this skill on the 3 meter and not on the 1 meter and she said “because this is so high I can’t do it.” It got me thinking about an exercise I took part in while in college with our college team.

A sports psychologist was working with our team and the group how many could walk across a board on the floor that was 6 inches wide and 100 yards long without falling off. Every member of the team raised their hand. He then asked how many could do it if the board was raised 3 feet off the floor. Again, everyone raised their hand. As the height of the board got higher and higher more and more of the team left their hands down, indicating they could not accomplish the task.

Finally, the only members of the team who agreed they could do it were those that participated in diving. The height of the board had reached 100 feet at that point. The next height was 2,000 feet and each of the divers continued to raise their hands. At this point one of the swimmers said that we were only saying that because we were used to heights. So the psychologist asked us how high the board would have to be before we couldn’t do it anymore.

My reply was that it didn’t matter how high the board was. When asked why I felt that way I said,” if you can walk across the board without falling off when it is on the ground, there is no reason you couldn’t do it no matter how high the board was in the air.”

All too often we allow ourselves to be overcome by irrational fears. We are afraid we will fail so we don’t try. We end up living in our safety zone and never improve on our situation because we are afraid of what might happen if we are not successful.

The young person paralyzed by fear last night to the point of tears eventually finds a means to do what is asked of them. Once they have accomplished the task the first time a smile comes across their face until the next time I ask them to do something they are afraid of. Be afraid is natural, allowing that fear to stop us from doing what we need to do is what we have to avoid.

Learning to harness the feelings is the most important lesson I can teach someone like this. Their fear comes from not believing they will be successful. They place all sorts of obstacles in front of their path making their journey that much more difficult.