Fear of Failure

Failure is inevitable in sports, work, school, and every other part of life. People either fail because of external factors, such as the environment or competition, or internal factors. Lack of persistence, discipline, or knowledge are great examples of internal factors that lead to failure. However, some people are fully equipped with the persistence, discipline, and knowledge to succeed, but are held back by their fear of failure.

The fear of failure will repress any positive attributes you do have and limit the effort you give when playing in a game or working towards a goal. For example, let’s say you are a shortstop and a ball is hit up the middle. The ball is on the edge of your range –  you will have to dive to make an above-average play to field the ball – but it’s well within your capabilities. Your pre-pitch preparation is perfect, you react to the ball off the bat and take a good angle to field it, but at the last minute, you hold back and lunge rather than dive. And you miss the ball by six inches. Did you try your best to field the ball? No.

Do you think you would have fielded the ball if you gave your full effort and dove? You will never know because you did not give yourself the chance to find out. Missing the ground ball was not due to a lack of talent; everything was perfect leading up to that last moment. That fear of failure never gave you the opportunity to find out if your talent and capabilities would allow you to field that ball. In the moments after the ball goes to the outfield, you are probably thinking that you failed in fielding the ground ball. I would argue that you did not fail and really can’t be frustrated at yourself for failure because you did not even try.

Success only comes from vulnerability. When you put yourself in situations where you have something to lose and you give maximum effort, then you allow yourself to be successful. If your goal in the offseason is to throw 80 mph, your vulnerability will come from the time and effort you put into training towards that goal, knowing that you could potentially fall short. Are you choosing to hang out with friends, eat junk food, and stay up late playing video games? Or are you choosing to put time into training, eat healthily and get enough sleep to recover?

The continuous effort is the fearlessness you need. That way once it is time to assess your goal, you can truly determine if you succeeded or failed. The worst feeling in the world is looking back after not achieving a goal or making a play in a game/practice and thinking “maybe I could have done more.” As the saying goes, hindsight is always 20-20.

You must be fearless in the eyes of failure if you want to succeed. There will be many high-pressure situations in games, and even practices or tryouts, where failure is staring you in the face. You have two options: not give your full effort and increase the likelihood of failure, or be vulnerable to failure and allow yourself to truly determine if you are capable of success. You might not field that ground ball, but you will never know if you do not try.