Have you ever considered what if everything works out ok?

Now I don’t know about you, but I spend at least half my life worrying about things that never actually happen. I can conjure up a whole host of possibilities in which the ending of the story is anything but happy, but I rarely imagine that things are going to work out beautifully.

I guess it is a form of self-protection. If I think the job isn’t going to end well or (we’re not going to get picked in the first place), the test is impossible to pass, the relationship could never work out, the lottery numbers are never gonna be the ones I’d picked and the answer to every reasonable request was gonna be no, I can keep myself safe from pain, rejection, failure and, conversely, success.

Now you may think the last comment is a bit weird, but let me explain. Many years ago, my friend’s husband used to (in his words) shuffle to Spar in his slippers. He lived about 2 doors down from Spar so it really wasn’t worth him putting shoes on to go to Spar. It occurred to me that if I got really famous, I mean JK Rowling famous, or Victoria Beckham famous, I wouldn’t be able to surreptitiously slope off to Spar in my slippers. Don’t get me wrong, I have NEVER, ever shuffled to Spar in my slippers, so why this is important to me is as much of a baffle to me as it is to the rest of the world. But I want to be free to do what I want to do without being in the spotlight of the media. I don’t want headlines of ‘Sarah Cooper seen shuffling to Spar in her slippers’(I think this worry came from the time when Princess Diana sneezed twice and ended up as front page news as she was clearly dying of the flu or something when in reality she had just sneezed. Twice. 

I like the fact that I am able to go about my daily business without people really bothering to notice. And with success comes responsibility. I don’t much like responsibility and tend to quiver at the very thought of being the sole responsible adult at any given point.

Why don’t we consider that everything could work out ok?

Why do we think everything is destined for failure? We may get that job, that house, that big win on the lottery, that relationship may turn out to be exactly what our soul needed, and is actually safe.

I suppose it doesn’t help if you’ve had parents who were very keen on wrapping you in cotton wool so you didn’t hurt yourself. I wasn’t encouraged to reach for the stars; I was encouraged to stay small, and unless an opportunity was handed to me on a plate, I was discouraged from reaching out in case it all went wrong and I’d fail.

I learnt to be afraid of failure, and I learnt to be wary of trying things in case it went wrong, to the point I didn’t do anything unless success was guaranteed. I started to wait to be asked to apply for things. Rather than reaching out for what I wanted. Life ended up being a bit like a board game at high school, whereby you either got 100% or you fell through the hole in the board. It felt like life had to have a 100% pass rate, or you’d have failed. Like the whole of life was pass/fail, not explore, reassess, reboot. 

Recently, I have realised that failure isn’t a thing; you either succeed or you have data to work with. This is a much more sensible attitude to take. If the first thing we try doesn’t work, we could simply go back to the drawing board, so to speak and try again. 

Further reading

https://www.sarahcooper.co.uk/7-ways-fear-gets-in-the-way/