Catch Your Life

Remarkably Simple Way To Conquer Fear Of Failure, So You Can Build Your Dream Life

Photo by Johannes Plenio

Do you remember when Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar?

Why haven’t you hopped on board, even for $100? It wouldn’t ruin you.

I didn’t because I was scared of losing money. I was unable to assess the risks-to-reward ratio. It’s because the fear of failure exaggerated the risk. I downplayed possible returns.

You might think fear is wrong. But that’s naive. The issue is not fear but letting it stop you from doing what you want.

I have years of experience running away from fear. It took me years before I worked it out. So, instead of running, I face the fear of failure on my own terms. Stay here to discover how to get the life you want: how to become a writer, a software developer, a free man, and a person people trust.

Do what you dreamt of and always postponed because the fear of failure stopped you.

The Biggest Mistake When Facing Fear of Failure

It’s funny how things work.

When I was afraid of trying, it wasn’t because I was logical or intelligent about risks. It was because I was scared shitless. Any risk looked like an iceberg that wrecked the Titanic.

But most of them were tiny ice cubes.

I could swim past them without noticing. That’s how it worked out for me. Are there scary, dangerous things in this world? Yes. The job is to tell apart ice cubes from icebergs.

For example, I wanted to be a writer, which was scary. It was so scary I ran away from trying. I told myself it was a fantasy, not a tangible goal.

But when I ran, something happened.

I felt emotional pain. Like something was punishing me. Something was telling me I was wasting time. I felt no meaning in life. And I did everything to silence that voice: heavy drinking and drug use. When I partied, I couldn’t hear the voice. Until the next day came.

The real reason why this is so dangerous is every time I run away from fear, it gets stronger.

At first, it wasn’t significant. I could try to act despite it. But with time, it got gigantic. It became the iceberg. And I started sinking like the Titanic after meeting it.

The lesson to remember is that the fear of failure grows with time and inaction. Running away from it is the biggest failure of them all. It strips your life of meaning.

Never Lie to Yourself About What You Want

For 6 years, I developed Android applications.

Not once did I ask myself why. I learned a lot about programming. But nothing about myself.

I had a great childhood with my parents and my sister. I was surrounded by friends. Money wasn’t a problem, as I had a place to live and food on my table.

Man, that was privileged already, and I was on the verge of getting more from life.

But even then, when everything was in my grasp, I never controlled my fear of failure.

I woke up with shivers for many days because I had no idea what to do next. I was thinking about how to stay an Android developer for 10 years. What if they fire me? What if the android dies? And so on. There is always something, right?

For the whole time, I had this underlying sense of not doing what I wanted.

It wasn’t about resigning from coding. It’s a fascinating work and hobby. But my teenage dream was to be a writer.

I wanted to be like Martin Eden, a hero of Jack London’s book. A guy who transformed from an illiterate sailor to a world-class writer who had all the money in the world. But without ending like him.

I envied his erudition and unapologetic approach to life. The knowledge he gathered in such a short time was a thing that led me to believe reading and learning is a dream life. So, for 10 years, I quietly dreamt of going in his footsteps.

I tried writing online once. My blog called catchyourlife lived for a couple of weeks, before I removed it out of extreme stress and fear about what people would think of me. Then I gave up for the first time.

Fear won and grew under my nose.

But I remember the excitement of publishing my first blog post. The thrill of refreshing the page to see how many people visited. It was rejuvenating.

But even in the darkest times, there is a way.

The Light of Hope – The Beauty of Life is All About Change

On the 20th of April 2020, I had a thought I never had before – that I’ll die.

Not that I assumed I was immortal before.

I just never thought about dying soon. But that thought was crisp – continue what you’re doing, and you’ll die. The threat seemed imminent. Not remote, not in 20 years – soon.

I now think that it was the fear of the biggest failure – leading to my death from substance abuse – that woke me up from the nightmare I believed in.

On that day, I decided to stop drinking.

I remember I went to the shop to buy 5 more beers to ease the hangover. While drinking the 5th, I realized it had to be my last one.

Just like that, I had more free time than ever. My first weekend was crazy. I woke up on Saturday and was full of energy, even though I had trouble sleeping. Usually, on Saturday, I had a terrible hangover, my head ached, and I wanted to eat McDonald’s. It was a little light of hope for me.

The additional energy I used to build habits and develop my spirituality.

I finally had a topic worth writing about – my personal transformation. Then I started crafting my mission, and now it’s about dealing with the biggest enemy of my life – myself. The words started flowing. But then I failed myself again.

I became obsessed with numbers.

Productivity became my new drug. Reading more books gives me knowledge, and more readers make it easier to share my thoughts. At the same time, it works like alcohol. It makes the true reason for doing something obscure. Instead of enjoying the process, I wanted more. I wanted to read more books and have more followers, but I lost the goal from sight.

There is never enough.

I traded alcohol addiction for productivity addiction. The step forward. But not the last one.

I didn’t write because I wanted to share my thoughts.

I wrote because I wanted to earn money. I wrote because I wanted to gain followers. That’s alright, but it stands opposite to what I wanted from writing – the freedom to be myself.

So, I was still motivated by fear.

The lesson is that even when you improve, there is a need to oversee the process. I wanted to write to understand myself better and to help you understand yourself, not to gather followers and status.

The Productivity Whip Got Me Cornered

Despite my progress, I still got stuck, as always.

My life started working similarly to how it worked when I was drinking. When I didn’t want to go out, I explained myself with work instead of the need to stay home, drinking and watching movies.

I wrote a couple of good articles.

Most of them never reached a major audience. They lack authenticity from my side. I wanted people to like me. So I wrote what you wanted to read. I wasn’t myself. Therefore I looked for the topics online to become another self-help summary writer.

It’s, again, not a bad thing in itself.

It’s just not why I wanted to write. Martin Eden wrote to share his views, explain ideas, learn, and get the life he dreamt of. I wrote because I wanted you to read my work.

The result was the same pulp you get served here daily, another clone of mindless regurgitation of ideas.

But I’m spicy. Most of what I say to my friends and family is controversial. I love being in opposition. I love discussions based on merits. But you don’t know that because I censored myself.

Articles became a sad responsibility.

I thought I had to write to publish four or eight stories to get followers. Probably I do. But I never dreamt of gaining followers for gaining followers. I wanted to share what I learned while living my life so you can use my experience to drive your progress.

Maybe I was lying to myself when I thought I liked writing.

Maybe it was for showoff. Maybe I just wanted a badge of honor saying I have 100k followers on Medium. When I understood that, I motivated myself with fear for my whole life, including why I wrote. I knew I had to do things differently.

I feel with my whole self that I can’t focus on building an audience.

It’s giving in to fear of failure. That’s how I motivate myself with fear. The number of followers is a whip I use to get back in line. To produce another pulp, I would never read. Fear made me act constantly, without thinking if the action was in the right direction.

I ran away to productivity to cover the fear of failure. Now I think I was afraid of failing as a writer. That’s why I went into writing whatever there was to write without thinking if that aligned with my values.

If There Is No Love, It’s Not Worth It

It sounds cheeky, even for me, and I wrote it.

But stick with me for a second.

Love is the feeling I want to motivate myself with. Fear is a great motivator, but love is calmer. There is a difference between writing because I’m afraid of not meeting my quota and writing because I love sharing my observations about life with you. The second one is my goal.

I no longer believe in any other way.

I no longer want to check how many followers I got daily. Focus on the outcome made me miserable. Writing lost its magic. And for me, a writer publishing 3 articles a month, it’s simply not the best way.

Because of this, I stopped writing.

This is my first attempt to get back on track with this new motivation. I write slower. I write what I want to write. I’ll let you decide if that’s better.

Now, I’ll break all the rules I don’t care about.

For years, I stuck to the practice. I showed up every day and created a content mill of regurgitated ideas to have something to publish. The only thing that was missing was writing about how to write.

All because of fear.

All done in a crazy rush of writing more for more views. More and more, faster. Now and forever. But more is needed to show you what I am. That’s not enough to enjoy the process.

I must become something more than the fear of failure.

I want to write because it helps me organize my experience. My daily life is a never-ending stream of challenges. For many, I have solutions that you’re looking for. For many, you have solutions I’m looking for. That’s why I want to write: to teach and to learn.

I can help you because I understand you can help me.

We’re different. But not that much that there is nothing in common. You can be a chef while I’m a software dev. We do different things, but we serve people.

We can become better by using each other’s efforts and experiences.

So, that’s the reason I wanted to write. When I stopped running away from fear, I accepted it and realized I lacked positive motivation. You are my positive motivation. You and our potential to improve each other’s lives.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Even If You Fear The Failure

Why worrying is a waste of energy

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality

Seneca

Seneca was right.

I do this all the time. I produce suffering on demand.

Recently, we got to Bali.

The time before the trip was one of the most stressful this year. It was because the fear of failure showed up as a never-ending replay of scooter accidents, losing documents, money, or getting robbed. I suffered in imagination.

When we got here, it was easy.

We faced most of my fears without a problem. Getting a SIM card was a breeze. Our driver took us to a point with SIM cards. One tried to rip us off, another offered the price I knew. Done in 5 minutes, but I stressed about this for hours.

The same driver got lost on our way to the hotel in the mountains at 10pm. It was stressful, but I helped him navigate with Google Maps. We got there.

No one was there to give us the keys.

In my mind I suffered a 1000 times. When we got lost, I assumed we wouldn’t have a place to sleep. In reality, I asked the driver to call the number and talk with the host. After 10 minutes, we got into our Villa.

The lesson for me was that we can handle what life presents us. The task is to be in the best shape to do that. And it means having resources available.

What do you want?

What helps with saving resources is knowing what you want.

Having a clear destination spares mental space for handling immediate problems like getting lost. When I had no idea what to do, I got destabilized with the slightest challenges. When I know where I go, I get destabilized for minutes instead of days. It’s easier to solve the problem when you focus on how to solve it instead of replaying possible failures in your mind.

How to find out what you want? Try this excellent question from the book “What Matters Most. The Power of Living Your Values” by Hyrum W. Smith: “What would you do if you had 6 months to live?”

Eye-opening.

I listed none of my daily worries. Nothing about working longer or harder. But I listed everything about spending time with people I love while experiencing everything the world offers, including what we call negative emotions. My list was about improving my life and helping others improve their lives.

That’s why knowing what you want helps.

A list of what you want can act as a filter. Instead of wasting time on everything, you filter out what’s not on your list. Then, your daily actions align with your goals. Because you do what brings you closer to what you want.

How to use fear?

While you’re on the quest to build your dream life, what is fear then?

It’s merely your body’s natural reaction when you face the unknown.

Fear is a side of the coin called opportunity. The other side is reward. Whenever you face fear, it means you have to take risks to get the reward.

The fear you feel is a force of nature. It’s not the enemy. You decide if you make it bad or use it to your advantage. Where the fear of failure shows up, there is a reward to get. Then it’s your guide. Use it to torture yourself in imagination. Then it’s your enemy.

To live your life and stop worrying, remember what fear is. You can feel it and act despite it. No need to fight it, or wait until it fades. When you accept it, you can use it.

Conclusion

Fear of failure negatively affects your potential to realize your dreams.

The fear is not bad, but how we approach it is suboptimal. Assuming you must live without fear makes acting when you’re scared impossible. Because you feel like something is wrong. You see all those people doing what they want, and you think they’re not scared. But they are.

What I noticed in myself, though, is that acting despite fear is different from acting because of fear.

Fear is a powerful motivator. When I got into the productivity addiction mode, fear was my fuel. But it didn’t get me to the last stop. It’s not enough to motivate my actions only with fear. I needed something I could chase to complement what I was running from.

Only now, when it’s clear I want to write to share what I’ve learned, I got the positive motivation.

The issue with fear-only motivation is that it stresses you out. There is always something you must do now. You must do more. Maybe you must, but knowing why can justify that. Then, it becomes a way to get what you want. Then you strive toward something, not only run away from something.

The biggest mistake is letting fear win, but the second is relying only on fear to strive towards your dreams.

Remarkably Simple Way To Conquer Fear Of Failure, So You Can Build Your Dream Life

Photo by Johannes Plenio

Do you remember when Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar?

Why haven’t you hopped on board, even for $100? It wouldn’t ruin you.

I didn’t because I was scared of losing money. I was unable to assess the risks-to-reward ratio. It’s because the fear of failure exaggerated the risk. I downplayed possible returns.

You might think fear is wrong. But that’s naive. The issue is not fear but letting it stop you from doing what you want.

I have years of experience running away from fear. It took me years before I worked it out. So, instead of running, I face the fear of failure on my own terms. Stay here to discover how to get the life you want: how to become a writer, a software developer, a free man, and a person people trust.

Do what you dreamt of and always postponed because the fear of failure stopped you.

The Biggest Mistake When Facing Fear of Failure

It’s funny how things work.

When I was afraid of trying, it wasn’t because I was logical or intelligent about risks. It was because I was scared shitless. Any risk looked like an iceberg that wrecked the Titanic.

But most of them were tiny ice cubes.

I could swim past them without noticing. That’s how it worked out for me. Are there scary, dangerous things in this world? Yes. The job is to tell apart ice cubes from icebergs.

For example, I wanted to be a writer, which was scary. It was so scary I ran away from trying. I told myself it was a fantasy, not a tangible goal.

But when I ran, something happened.

I felt emotional pain. Like something was punishing me. Something was telling me I was wasting time. I felt no meaning in life. And I did everything to silence that voice: heavy drinking and drug use. When I partied, I couldn’t hear the voice. Until the next day came.

The real reason why this is so dangerous is every time I run away from fear, it gets stronger.

At first, it wasn’t significant. I could try to act despite it. But with time, it got gigantic. It became the iceberg. And I started sinking like the Titanic after meeting it.

The lesson to remember is that the fear of failure grows with time and inaction. Running away from it is the biggest failure of them all. It strips your life of meaning.

Never Lie to Yourself About What You Want

For 6 years, I developed Android applications.

Not once did I ask myself why. I learned a lot about programming. But nothing about myself.

I had a great childhood with my parents and my sister. I was surrounded by friends. Money wasn’t a problem, as I had a place to live and food on my table.

Man, that was privileged already, and I was on the verge of getting more from life.

But even then, when everything was in my grasp, I never controlled my fear of failure.

I woke up with shivers for many days because I had no idea what to do next. I was thinking about how to stay an Android developer for 10 years. What if they fire me? What if the android dies? And so on. There is always something, right?

For the whole time, I had this underlying sense of not doing what I wanted.

It wasn’t about resigning from coding. It’s a fascinating work and hobby. But my teenage dream was to be a writer.

I wanted to be like Martin Eden, a hero of Jack London’s book. A guy who transformed from an illiterate sailor to a world-class writer who had all the money in the world. But without ending like him.

I envied his erudition and unapologetic approach to life. The knowledge he gathered in such a short time was a thing that led me to believe reading and learning is a dream life. So, for 10 years, I quietly dreamt of going in his footsteps.

I tried writing online once. My blog called catchyourlife lived for a couple of weeks, before I removed it out of extreme stress and fear about what people would think of me. Then I gave up for the first time.

Fear won and grew under my nose.

But I remember the excitement of publishing my first blog post. The thrill of refreshing the page to see how many people visited. It was rejuvenating.

But even in the darkest times, there is a way.

The Light of Hope – The Beauty of Life is All About Change

On the 20th of April 2020, I had a thought I never had before – that I’ll die.

Not that I assumed I was immortal before.

I just never thought about dying soon. But that thought was crisp – continue what you’re doing, and you’ll die. The threat seemed imminent. Not remote, not in 20 years – soon.

I now think that it was the fear of the biggest failure – leading to my death from substance abuse – that woke me up from the nightmare I believed in.

On that day, I decided to stop drinking.

I remember I went to the shop to buy 5 more beers to ease the hangover. While drinking the 5th, I realized it had to be my last one.

Just like that, I had more free time than ever. My first weekend was crazy. I woke up on Saturday and was full of energy, even though I had trouble sleeping. Usually, on Saturday, I had a terrible hangover, my head ached, and I wanted to eat McDonald’s. It was a little light of hope for me.

The additional energy I used to build habits and develop my spirituality.

I finally had a topic worth writing about – my personal transformation. Then I started crafting my mission, and now it’s about dealing with the biggest enemy of my life – myself. The words started flowing. But then I failed myself again.

I became obsessed with numbers.

Productivity became my new drug. Reading more books gives me knowledge, and more readers make it easier to share my thoughts. At the same time, it works like alcohol. It makes the true reason for doing something obscure. Instead of enjoying the process, I wanted more. I wanted to read more books and have more followers, but I lost the goal from sight.

There is never enough.

I traded alcohol addiction for productivity addiction. The step forward. But not the last one.

I didn’t write because I wanted to share my thoughts.

I wrote because I wanted to earn money. I wrote because I wanted to gain followers. That’s alright, but it stands opposite to what I wanted from writing – the freedom to be myself.

So, I was still motivated by fear.

The lesson is that even when you improve, there is a need to oversee the process. I wanted to write to understand myself better and to help you understand yourself, not to gather followers and status.

The Productivity Whip Got Me Cornered

Despite my progress, I still got stuck, as always.

My life started working similarly to how it worked when I was drinking. When I didn’t want to go out, I explained myself with work instead of the need to stay home, drinking and watching movies.

I wrote a couple of good articles.

Most of them never reached a major audience. They lack authenticity from my side. I wanted people to like me. So I wrote what you wanted to read. I wasn’t myself. Therefore I looked for the topics online to become another self-help summary writer.

It’s, again, not a bad thing in itself.

It’s just not why I wanted to write. Martin Eden wrote to share his views, explain ideas, learn, and get the life he dreamt of. I wrote because I wanted you to read my work.

The result was the same pulp you get served here daily, another clone of mindless regurgitation of ideas.

But I’m spicy. Most of what I say to my friends and family is controversial. I love being in opposition. I love discussions based on merits. But you don’t know that because I censored myself.

Articles became a sad responsibility.

I thought I had to write to publish four or eight stories to get followers. Probably I do. But I never dreamt of gaining followers for gaining followers. I wanted to share what I learned while living my life so you can use my experience to drive your progress.

Maybe I was lying to myself when I thought I liked writing.

Maybe it was for showoff. Maybe I just wanted a badge of honor saying I have 100k followers on Medium. When I understood that, I motivated myself with fear for my whole life, including why I wrote. I knew I had to do things differently.

I feel with my whole self that I can’t focus on building an audience.

It’s giving in to fear of failure. That’s how I motivate myself with fear. The number of followers is a whip I use to get back in line. To produce another pulp, I would never read. Fear made me act constantly, without thinking if the action was in the right direction.

I ran away to productivity to cover the fear of failure. Now I think I was afraid of failing as a writer. That’s why I went into writing whatever there was to write without thinking if that aligned with my values.

If There Is No Love, It’s Not Worth It

It sounds cheeky, even for me, and I wrote it.

But stick with me for a second.

Love is the feeling I want to motivate myself with. Fear is a great motivator, but love is calmer. There is a difference between writing because I’m afraid of not meeting my quota and writing because I love sharing my observations about life with you. The second one is my goal.

I no longer believe in any other way.

I no longer want to check how many followers I got daily. Focus on the outcome made me miserable. Writing lost its magic. And for me, a writer publishing 3 articles a month, it’s simply not the best way.

Because of this, I stopped writing.

This is my first attempt to get back on track with this new motivation. I write slower. I write what I want to write. I’ll let you decide if that’s better.

Now, I’ll break all the rules I don’t care about.

For years, I stuck to the practice. I showed up every day and created a content mill of regurgitated ideas to have something to publish. The only thing that was missing was writing about how to write.

All because of fear.

All done in a crazy rush of writing more for more views. More and more, faster. Now and forever. But more is needed to show you what I am. That’s not enough to enjoy the process.

I must become something more than the fear of failure.

I want to write because it helps me organize my experience. My daily life is a never-ending stream of challenges. For many, I have solutions that you’re looking for. For many, you have solutions I’m looking for. That’s why I want to write: to teach and to learn.

I can help you because I understand you can help me.

We’re different. But not that much that there is nothing in common. You can be a chef while I’m a software dev. We do different things, but we serve people.

We can become better by using each other’s efforts and experiences.

So, that’s the reason I wanted to write. When I stopped running away from fear, I accepted it and realized I lacked positive motivation. You are my positive motivation. You and our potential to improve each other’s lives.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Even If You Fear The Failure

Why worrying is a waste of energy

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality

Seneca

Seneca was right.

I do this all the time. I produce suffering on demand.

Recently, we got to Bali.

The time before the trip was one of the most stressful this year. It was because the fear of failure showed up as a never-ending replay of scooter accidents, losing documents, money, or getting robbed. I suffered in imagination.

When we got here, it was easy.

We faced most of my fears without a problem. Getting a SIM card was a breeze. Our driver took us to a point with SIM cards. One tried to rip us off, another offered the price I knew. Done in 5 minutes, but I stressed about this for hours.

The same driver got lost on our way to the hotel in the mountains at 10pm. It was stressful, but I helped him navigate with Google Maps. We got there.

No one was there to give us the keys.

In my mind I suffered a 1000 times. When we got lost, I assumed we wouldn’t have a place to sleep. In reality, I asked the driver to call the number and talk with the host. After 10 minutes, we got into our Villa.

The lesson for me was that we can handle what life presents us. The task is to be in the best shape to do that. And it means having resources available.

What do you want?

What helps with saving resources is knowing what you want.

Having a clear destination spares mental space for handling immediate problems like getting lost. When I had no idea what to do, I got destabilized with the slightest challenges. When I know where I go, I get destabilized for minutes instead of days. It’s easier to solve the problem when you focus on how to solve it instead of replaying possible failures in your mind.

How to find out what you want? Try this excellent question from the book “What Matters Most. The Power of Living Your Values” by Hyrum W. Smith: “What would you do if you had 6 months to live?”

Eye-opening.

I listed none of my daily worries. Nothing about working longer or harder. But I listed everything about spending time with people I love while experiencing everything the world offers, including what we call negative emotions. My list was about improving my life and helping others improve their lives.

That’s why knowing what you want helps.

A list of what you want can act as a filter. Instead of wasting time on everything, you filter out what’s not on your list. Then, your daily actions align with your goals. Because you do what brings you closer to what you want.

How to use fear?

While you’re on the quest to build your dream life, what is fear then?

It’s merely your body’s natural reaction when you face the unknown.

Fear is a side of the coin called opportunity. The other side is reward. Whenever you face fear, it means you have to take risks to get the reward.

The fear you feel is a force of nature. It’s not the enemy. You decide if you make it bad or use it to your advantage. Where the fear of failure shows up, there is a reward to get. Then it’s your guide. Use it to torture yourself in imagination. Then it’s your enemy.

To live your life and stop worrying, remember what fear is. You can feel it and act despite it. No need to fight it, or wait until it fades. When you accept it, you can use it.

Conclusion

Fear of failure negatively affects your potential to realize your dreams.

The fear is not bad, but how we approach it is suboptimal. Assuming you must live without fear makes acting when you’re scared impossible. Because you feel like something is wrong. You see all those people doing what they want, and you think they’re not scared. But they are.

What I noticed in myself, though, is that acting despite fear is different from acting because of fear.

Fear is a powerful motivator. When I got into the productivity addiction mode, fear was my fuel. But it didn’t get me to the last stop. It’s not enough to motivate my actions only with fear. I needed something I could chase to complement what I was running from.

Only now, when it’s clear I want to write to share what I’ve learned, I got the positive motivation.

The issue with fear-only motivation is that it stresses you out. There is always something you must do now. You must do more. Maybe you must, but knowing why can justify that. Then, it becomes a way to get what you want. Then you strive toward something, not only run away from something.

The biggest mistake is letting fear win, but the second is relying only on fear to strive towards your dreams.

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