Atychiphobia▪︎Kakorrhaphiophobia

Atychiphobia  : Fear of failure.

Kakorrhaphiophobia      : Fear of failure and defeat.

I learnt two new words today while preparing this blog. (Don’t ask me to pronounce them.) But isn’t this one of the reasons most of us procrastinate in with our tasks? We are afraid to fail? In university we are given a number of assignments due at a given time, but also don’t have an idea whether we have it in us to complete them. What if we do not understand the question clearly? That one moment we give ourselves the benefit of doubt, procrastination takes full control.

Procrastination.

The fear of failure, the fear of not being/doing well enough. Each time we are handed an assignment, the thought of having everything we write be judged and every mark we lose affecting our final grade affects the success rate be it in schools or at work which affects usually has an effect on how great of a career you will have. It’s some form of expression of despair, knowing that your life backs on words written on a paper.

The fear of passing time, running out of time. Too fast for our taste. For a split second we wish we could just yell ‘STOP!!!’ We want to suspend time for a bit. We want to make every second of our lives count. But time is merciless. We have to jump from one assignment to the next, work to more work.

It definitely seems like a pleading cry. Can you relate?

Despite feeling like all my efforts are not good enough, I manage to submit all my tasks before the stipulated deadline. I know it’s paralyzing. All I wanted to do most of the times was just crawl back into bed and sleep the whole day. But fact is, it gets more difficult as we become more anxious. Leaving everything to last minute get quite stressful for us to cope.

Not every one of us is haunted by fear of failure, but if you do, it’s most probably because you were brought up that way. In most homes, children are taught to fear failure, although we learn a lot from our mistakes.

If every time you get an assignment you are afraid of not doing well enough, this feeling does not automatically go away. You cannot get rid of anxiety, but you can most definitely control it. You can choose to either cope with it or let yourself be consumed by it.

There is no single way to go by it, no secret formula. No one size fits all. It is all about training yourself to take the situations as a new challenge instead of a threat. Changing my attitude about failure and knowing that I do not have to score the highest to get the best learning experience but give it my best shot may take some time. And a lot of personal and mental health.

This is battle only you can overcome…

If you find yourself in this same position. This is how I self-motivate myself to take the fear of failure into a challenge and out of the way of my studies.

You are afraid of not being good enough, right? Well, this basically shows you are eager to succeed. So, regardless of the paralyzing anxiety, what does a person do to succeed?

Yes, exactly that. They work. They do the work.

I definitely would not want to get a ZERO on any assignment. No! Submitting anything at all, even if it’s not your best work, will definitely not score you a zero.

We have to bite the bullet. The most painful and important step is to start. So, once you get something on paper, you will be able to get through it.

You may feel that you have written rubbish, but that does not really matter right now. Do not ponder yourself over the first sentence. Just lay everything you know out. Complete everything. Once you are done, you may go back and review your paper.

It hurts, it made me cringe. But that is all fine. What matters is, you have done it. Ready for the second draft?

Or for the next assignment?

Do you have a mantra you tell yourself get through this paralyzing situation? Share it in the comments below!