Getting over fear of failure | Lifestyle.INQ

OCTOBER 27, 2022

As a kid, I had the reputation for being the smart girl. My As were straight, my tests perfect, my medals gold. To put it plainly, I was the overachieving “gifted kid” who succeeded often and with little effort.

My school was also a small school that rarely, if ever, joined out-of-school competitions. This led to me winning almost every single academic contest held. To be completely honest, this put me on a high horse. I believed that I could win any competition, as long as I wanted it.

I was in for a treat when I joined a district campus journalism competition in Grade 6. I was up against hundreds of other students, some of whom had years of experience in journalism whereas I had been writing news for a few months.

Not winning

Still, I believed that I was the best. I wrote an essay that I loved and prayed that I would win. Fast-forward to the awards ceremony, my name wasn’t called. I cried, without shame, in front of my whole journalism team.

Though I was scared of failing before, this experience solidified it. There was nothing in this world that brought me more sadness than getting a bad grade or not winning an award I wanted.

This fear continued to haunt me throughout high school. With every low grade I got, my heart dropped just as low.

When I switched to homeschooling in Grade 8, I ended up struggling in a few subjects, mainly math and science. The curriculum was difficult, to say the least, and I had no prerequisites for the more advanced Math. My fear of failure was at an all-time high. I cried myself to sleep one time when I wasn’t doing well in a math unit. It got to the point where my dad joked that he would give me a prize only if I made a mistake, trying to make light of the situation.

What changed my mindset and alleviated my fear of failure, however, was joining another writing competition. It’s a little ironic to think that I redid something that cemented my fear of failure in the first place.

Realizations

Last January, I joined an international essay competition where the winning prize was a scholarship to a summer program at Cambridge University. Thousands of students from all over the world join this contest yearly.

Recently, I received the results of the competition. I had won a partial scholarship as a runner-up. For obvious reasons, I wanted to win the full scholarship, but that didn’t happen. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too disappointed. It was still a huge accomplishment. With this, lessons and realizations about failure and fear came rushing into my mind.

I’m slightly ashamed to say that it has taken me 14 years to admit to myself that I’m not all that great. There will always be someone better and smarter than me and I won’t always win what I want to win. While you may laugh, what is common sense to most people is a life-changing epiphany to me.

For this reason, I’ve learned to not be too hard on myself. I’ve learned that partial wins are still wins, Bs aren’t the end of the world and every experience is a lesson learned.

So, no matter what happens, always remember to let failures build you up and never let them break you down. —CONTRIBUTED INQ

The author is a student at Homeschool Global.

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