Managing Fear and Doubt
A number of years ago, during a blisteringly hot and humid run, I felt anxious and nervous about an upcoming race. I have several running mantras I employ when the going gets tough and on this particular run it was “no pain,” courtesy of Rocky IV. Fortunately, there was no pain, just fear and doubt, and I was consumed with it.
In my experience, attitude is everything as nothing sinks you faster than fear that you can’t do something. That you will fail. Which got me thinking about fear and doubt in general. Where I landed is that it’s okay to be afraid, it’s natural and likely healthy in some respects. It was this fear of failure that enabled me to follow a marathon training plan because I didn’t want to be unprepared. In this particular scenario the only failure would be to avoid undertaking the marathon to avoid the prospect of failure.
While fear has a place in my life, doubt decidedly less so. I cannot doubt my ability to achieve my goals, whether it’s work, a race or navigating my day to day life. I’m very pragmatic and have a good sense of what I can and cannot do. As a result, my tendency is to banish thoughts of doubt and failure because they’re not who I am. Which is not to say I’m exceptional in any way, I’m not, and as a runner, at my best I was average. And all of that is perfectly fine. Being successful is defined differently for each of us.
By the same token, what I constitute as professional success is vastly different than personal success, or even a hobby such as running. There’s a saying in running that finishing is winning and it’s true. While I have run more than a few races and may or may not have achieved the finish times I trained and hoped for, finishing any race uninjured is a definite win. It doesn’t always feel that way in the moment, but with a little reflection, I can remind myself that this is a hobby and I do it for fun. If there’s no joy in it, then I need to reassess why I’m doing it.
Regardless of how I define success in each area of my life, they all share certain traits. I expect to give it my all. I may not always achieve the results I want but I can live with that. When I ran my first marathon I finished almost 30 minutes slower than I expected. I trained at a certain level and thought my expectations were realistic, but I didn’t factor in what I didn’t know. Or as Donald Rumsfeld once said, there are unknown unknowns. I had never run a marathon before and didn’t know how I would feel physically or mentally, how I would handle the course with 50,000 other runners and hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators, how the hours leading up to the start time would affect my performance or even how seemingly minute decisions I made would play out over the course of what was a very long day. I only knew that I thought my goal was achievable and, in my mind, I fell far short. I was bitterly disappointed which was unfortunate because I had crossed the finish line uninjured. It was a win, and I didn’t let myself celebrate it. (This is why they advise first time marathoners not to have a time related goal.)
But every “failure” provides opportunities to learn something new to help you do better the next time out. To apply the lessons you’ve learned. When I ran my second marathon, I missed my goal by 10 minutes but felt I did everything right and was genuinely pleased with my time. The day was a win for me because I gave it my best and had no regrets, which made all the difference.
If we go back to my original run in which I was consumed with anxiety, I modified my “no pain” mantra to “no fear, no doubt.” Repeating this enabled me to block out all other thoughts so that I could get out of my head and out of my way. I cleared my mind of all of it and thought only about what was directly in front of me – not the total mileage I was to run, not the miles I had already run, and not the remaining miles left in my run. In addition to having the best run I’d had in a while, I also realized that this is how I need to approach my life in general.
Sometimes, fear and doubt come creeping in and it is a slippery slope. When it does, I remind myself that there is nothing I can’t do, nothing I can’t endure and nothing that will beat me. So, while there is much in life that won’t go my way and even that will make me afraid, for me the goal is to banish my own fears and doubts as they relate to failure. If I give it my all and try to incorporate what I’ve learned from experiences along the way, there is no way I can fail.
