About failure

A long time ago I stumbled across a series of Instagram stories by Cursty Jackson (an american provolleyball player). I won't even try to remember the exact details but i'll give you the general idea of how this blog post came to be. In these stories, Cursty talked about being anxious about taking the elevator because of other people's opinions of her. She lived in a large apartment building and there was a lot of people on the elevator every day. Eventually it turned out that what she had thought would happen was pretty much all in head and there was no reason to be anxious. I really hope I didn't make any mistakes, given it has been a hot minute since those stories were posted. Anyhow, I could really relate to what she was experiencing at the time and hearing her say those things out loud made me realize that I could do something about how I was feeling. Now for me, these feelings were generally about failure in sports and what others thought about that but it could really be about anything. The point being, the feelings and that trapping anxiety you feel is the same. It just so happened that Cursty Jackon's experiences helped me pinpoint mine and i'm very grateful for that. It has taken me a long time to come to the place where I feel comfortable in posting this blog (it has sat in my drafts since the beginning of October 2018) and I really hope that now I, in turn can help someone else out with my experiences.

Failure is the biggest  reason we hold ourselves back. Imagine the things you would do if there was a switch to turn that doubting part of your mind off. Try that new yoga class, send him that text, jump on that plane and never look back. If you're anything like me and have played a thousand scenarios of what ifs through your head before making a decicision, you know what I mean.

I use to be one to calculated the things I did pretty carefully (don't get me wrong, I still am). I'm not even kidding when I say that all I cared about was what everyone else thought of me. I couldn't stand making mistakes. I would replay a conversation with someone over and over again, contemplating on what I should've said or done differently. Feeling stupid in the eyes of others was one of my biggest fears, so I tried exceptionally hard to be perfect. In fact I tried so hard that in some cases I just pretended to know stuff I had no clue about. What I didn't realize was that I was the only person making myself feel stupid.

In hindsight its easy to say that this part of me eventually transferred to my athletic career. I started thinking way too much instead of just living in the moment and going for it. Anytime I made an error I would play out possible scenarios for the outcome of the game. At times I would even start thinking about how my errors would effect my stats and what my match might look on paper. At somepoint I noticed this was stopping me from developing as an athlete. Funnily enough it never ocurred to me that it was also stopping me from developing as a person. Everything was so result-orientated for me.

I've always been extremely critical of my performances (be that sports or school). Only just recently have I started to be more relaxed about myself. Accepting that failure will be inevitable at times has been extremely difficult but also extremely rewarding. It gives you the chance to explore new paths and find new interests. You'll also end up finding out that some things just aren't meant for you or that this is exactly what your supposed to be doing with your life. Only after I had had to stop and take a hard look at how I was viewing myself, did I realized that making a change in my mindset was about so much more than just bettering my athletic performance.

For me the biggest leap was realizing my dreams and taking off to a foreign country to play volleyball. I've talked about it for as long as I can remember but I don't know how many people (aside from those who know me very well) really took me seriously. Saying this is my dream is so different from actually doing it but it happened. During my season in Lugano, I feel like I found myself not only as a player but as a person and there is still so much I want to learn now that the door has been opened. I'm nowhere near finished but no matter where I go or where I play in the future, I can say that I did that. I took that leap of faith without having any clue of the outcome and i'm so proud of that I did.

So now I want you to go back to where I talked about that imaginary switch in your mind that would stop you from doubting yourself and flip it. What would you do?

x Jess