Fear. It’s a strong little word. It motivates people more so
than love, hate, or courage. It is behind anger as its root, and is the cause
of failure in my life over, and over again. As part of my fourth step, this
week I am doing a fear inventory of myself, and I decided to write a post about
the subject to get my mind working. The process for writing out this step, and
associated inventories is not a format I am used to, it’s actually quite
difficult for me and I don’t think I’m being as thorough as I should be, but it
only asks me to be progressive in my action, and I will do this step repeatedly
over the years, so I can do a little better every time.
So, what am I afraid of? Well, spiders, dancing, needles,
and swimming. But those are not the fears that I am asked to write about. I
will attempt to explain some common fears in the following treatise. I hope I’m
thorough.
Failure. Even the word itself invokes fear. But why? Failure
is in our nature, and has been the building block of human evolution (if you
believe in that sort of thing). For me, it ties in with perfectionism. I put
unrealistic standards on myself and society, and anything less than perfect is
failure, which I beat myself up for. I expect that everything that I do or try
for the first time to be flawless. I’ve always thought this way, and I’ve never
succeeded. My mother wrote in an old post about my first experience with
rollerblades. I put them on, rolled down the garage driveway, and fell. I got
up, took them off, and stomped into the house and in a fit of rage threw them
onto the ground and proclaimed that they were stupid and I would never try them
on again. Or some such shit. I put the blame on the rollerblades. Interesting.
A few short months later I was a pro. All I had to do was practice like anybody
else would. But I assumed that when I first donned the wheels-on-shoes, I would
be an expert, something I still assume about things today, but I see now that I
really have made progress in that area. Just in writing this I can see that I
have developed patience. And although I still want to be perfect in everything I
do, I’m willing to go through the learning process to do it. It’s taken me over
three months at work to learn how to run two very complicated machines, and I’m
getting there, but every day it seems like I’m finding something new.
So, I am afraid of failure because failing makes me sad,
which turns to anger, which can lead to resentment. What a path. I have a lot
to look into there.
Next, let’s look at my fear of confrontation. This lead
exactly to built up resentments, and can turn into anger. Confrontation isn’t
just about fighting. It’s simple, really. I think normal people do not have
issues with confronting a bad boss, or a friend that’s making mistakes in life.
But not me. For years I worked in a restaurant with a terrible boss that had
unrealistic goals and expectations, and paid me less than I thought I was
worth. But I never said anything, I just let it all build up in my head until I
found ways to get what I wanted in the form of dishonesty in stealing,
resentment in talking bad about her to friends and coworkers, and selfishness
in doing things my way. Not a surprise, I was terminated with the explanation
that none of us were happy in the arrangement, and I went on unemployment,
which I blamed exclusively on the boss. I wrote about this in my resentment
portion of my fourth step, and will put her on my 8th step list and
I will be willing to make amends for
the damage I’ve caused.
I could go on and on, which makes me fairly confident in my
abilities to write out the rest of this step for my sponsor. I would appreciate
hearing any feedback on this one. Especially from you “normal” people. Do you
struggle with the same issues, or have you conquered your fears in life? And if
you have, how have you done it? Thanks for reading!
