Failing Due to Fear.
I was supposed to compete in a Spartan race this last Saturday. I say compete, but what I really mean was survive. 3.5 miles, brutal hill climb, hot high desert, 20 obstacles and many chances to fall and hurt myself.
I signed up for this just under a year ago, and have put a lot of hours into training – but not as many as I should have. I still wasn’t sure whether I would compete or not, right up to the check in line, where I chose spectator instead of competitor.
And in truth, I quit because I was afraid of it.
It’s not like I didn’t have good reasons not to go for it. Sometime in the past week something bit my leg (we’re thinking a spider while sitting in a park, or a mosquito, which my body overreacts to) and my leg swelled up, got red, hurt and itched like crazy.
I still have 3 abrasion burns on my leg from scratching while sleeping, all which require dressings to keep them covered right now.
Also add in the migraine at work on Friday that lead to me sleeping from 8pm until midnight, from which I couldn’t get back to sleep, so by race time I had been up around 28 hours with only 4 hours of pain-filled sleep.
So yeah – I had good reasons not to race, but they weren’t what did it for me.
The truth that I can’t deny, deep in my soul, was that I was afraid. As I watched all the competitors streaming in, I realized that they were in much better shape than I was.
I hadn’t trained anywhere need as much as I needed to, and especially not over the past couple of months. I’ve been under a great deal of emotional strain, and finding the energy to train wasn’t something I found easy.
So I was afraid of the race, of looking out of place, of the physical risks of such an intense activity, and of failing.
As I watched my 20-year-old open-heart surgery survivor son run away from the start line, I felt more of a failure than I usually do, which honestly is quite a lot anyway. We were supposed to run this together.
There he was, with a diagnosed heart murmur, being willing to push his body harder than he had ever done before. His courage and dedication moved me while it made me ashamed for my failure to be ready.
So while he ran, I waited.
As he came around the last corner, still facing 5-6 obstacles, he was in great spirits, strong and powerful. I watched him dive into a mud hole, swing from rings, jump over fire, hoist a heavy sandbag on a rope and climb a huge frame. I didn’t see any fear in his eyes, just a power and a determination that filled me with such joy, while reminding me of what I didn’t have that day.
I had to endure feeling weak, ashamed of myself, and knowing that I had let him down.
Since I don’t have a great relationship with my father, most of my role models have been from fiction. In Batman Begins, Alfred Pennyworth asks Bruce Wayne a question, and with his next breath answers it. “Why do we fall Master Wayne?”
As Bruce says nothing, Alfred gives the answer… “so that we may learn to pick ourselves up”. So I got up early on Sunday morning, and hit the treadmill for a bit. I hope to do a lot more of that in the near future.
Because on Saturday, my will and my heart failed me, and I fell in my own estimation.
So now I need to pick myself up. I can’t erase what happened on Saturday – life just doesn’t work that way. All I can do is push forward, and make sure that next year I am ready to stand and fight in the same place where I fell and quit. I’m going to have to fight harder, train longer, run further and lift heavier than I have done before, and keep my mind focused where it needs to be.
Because in the end, failure only beats us when we let it, and I can’t do that again.
I’m sharing this today because I’m sure there is someone out there who feels like a failure right now. Please know that I’m right there with you, and also know that the only way you’ve really failed is if you stop trying.
Maybe all you can do is pick yourself up again and try again to do whatever it is that you want to achieve. To you I would say – please try. Because knowing that you are trying is the only antidote I know to feeling like a failure.
And that’s not what I want for either of us.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings