Painless success…

All our lives, we keep on fighting against different things. We fight against despairs, failures, injustices, and most of our time is spent on fighting our fears. Have you ever noticed that new-born babies have no fears? Their fears grow as they grow. Fears are a system of checks and balances, for human beings. In the initial stages, fear is a system of restrictions, to avoid physical pain or inconvenience.

As the time passes, we come to know of emotional pain, and then, accordingly, we have a system of emotional or non-physical fears. These fears allow us to devise methods of achieving painless success. So it’s quite safe to say that fear is a stimulant, which makes your brain function, in such a way that you try to find methods, other than brute-forcing your way. 

I think, you must have observed that any given child, when shown an electric socket, for the first time, tries to shove a finger into the hole. If the child would be lucky, the parents or the caretaker would not let the child have the taste of fingering in that early age. Nevertheless, for great many of us, the fear comes not from the parents’ words, but from loads of electricity passing through the feeble body. After this practical acquaintance with the mightiest force in the universe (electricity), the child’s system of checks and balances makes a mark and probably a very big red mark that fingering is not a pleasurable fetish.

As the child grows this fear helps him/her to avoid electrocution, as well as helps in learning methods of safe usage of sockets. Anyway, the point of the matter is neither the hole nor the electricity, and most certainly not the finger. It’s about the greatness of fear.

It was the fear of darkness, which forced us to make a lamp. It was the fear of electrocution, which encouraged us to invent the rubber gloves. It was the fear of getting lost, which led us into making the GPS. It was the fear of freezing to death, which gave us the idea of creating a heating system. It was the fear of getting late, which brought up the idea of a clock or a watch. It was the fear of getting lost in history, which made us think about inventing scripture. 

It is the fear of death that makes life so precious. It is the fear of being left alone that makes you treasure society. It is the fear of hatred that makes you love. It is the fear of sorrow that helps you seek happiness. It is the fear of being afraid that gives you courage. 

As we grow-up, strangely enough, this guiding light called fear, becomes a problem, all of a sudden. I do not know why, but most of our problems start to look like the result of fears. The whole society starts telling us to fight our fears, to get rid of our fears, and fear becomes a negative association. Fear becomes a part of embarrassment. 

We start fighting our innocent fears, like fear of darkness; fear of getting lost, fear of having fears in general, and a good amount of our valuable time goes to waste, in getting rid of fears. And doing so, we gradually lose our system of logical reasoning, and the system of checks and balances. We lose fears and we lose the ability to find viable solutions, which help us avoid pain or displeasure.

I know you must be gathering words to politely tell me that I am stupid if I think that fear is a positive thing. You must be eager to tell me that how could fear be positive, when a lot of people cannot do anything in their lives because of the fear of failure? Won’t they be better off if they would not have that fear, and if they would do the things that, they are afraid of doing, because of the chances of failure? 

It might sound right, but the problem is that the fear of failure in fact gives you energies to do things in a better way. Fear of failure helps you concentrate better. If I would be afraid of failure, I would do everything possible, and even things beyond my possibilities, to avoid failure. It is in fact the fear of failure, which forces you to check and recheck everything; go through dry runs; make plans A, B and C, and do a lot of other positive things. It is the fear of failure, which makes you look into minute details, because otherwise you might overlook a lot of vital things, because being fearless your attitude will be “What will be the worst outcome? I would fail. So what!”

And this, my friends, is a recipe of failure. Observe your own lives. When you start doing something new, like driving a car or riding a bicycle, you have the fear of failure (falling or crashing), which makes you concentrate hard on your actions. Your observation of traffic lights is better. Your level of attention on the road is better, and you put all your concentration into every meter of the process. 

Then, with the passage of time, you lose that fear of failure, because you start thinking that you can ride and you can drive, and there is nothing to it. As soon as you fight off the fear, you start concentrating more on the music in your car. You are more concerned about your heart beat, when riding a bicycle, or you can talk to someone on the phone, while riding or driving. And I don’t need to tell you what comes next. For the lucky ones, the consequences can either be as minor as a damaged car or a broken bicycle, or non-fatal and non-crippling injuries. But some of us might shift from a driver’s seat into a wheel chair or even into a coffin. And all of this happens, because of the loss of fear of failure.

Now coming to your argument about the people, who don’t do things because of fear of failure, I feel sorry to tell you that what you are branding as fear of failure is not so, at all. It is not the fear of failure, it is the fear of exposure, which stops these people. These people are afraid of exposing their incapacity, their incapability and their stupidity. It is not that they have fear of failure. No sir. They are not sure of their own strengths. They have low self-esteem, and low levels of self-confidence. And, I think, you will agree with me that lack of abilities has nothing to do with fears. So probably we should not be fighting against our fears, but our in-capabilities. 

As regards to fights, I think we should not fight against fears, and especially the fear of failure. Nevertheless, if we are so eager to fight, we should fight against success at all costs, and success by any means. Because, the given success creates problems for us, and for the people surrounding us, and for the society in general.

I know that everybody does everything just to achieve success, but in doing so, we should have the fear of selecting the wrong means or the inappropriate costs. 

Just like redefining the concept of fear(s), we should also revisit our so-called positive attitudes. We should throw such expressions like “Everything is fair in war and love” into a deep trash can. What we can call “FAIR” is something that leads me to success, but at the same time does not hurt or undermine anyone else. My success at the cost of others is not success. It is a great failure.

So the next time, somebody comes and asks you to “Just do it!” be afraid of such people, because this type of action plan, which negates fears, cannot take you to sustainable success. Be afraid of failure and accordingly think and rethink, before you do it!

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