FEAR OF FAILURE

When I was in my early teens, I, like most others my age, was afraid of failing at things, only because I was worried about being ridiculed by my peers and friends.

When I say failing,  I don’t just mean in academics. I mean at anything. So much so that I avoided trying out anything new that I wasn’t sure I was good at. To make matters worse, around my mid teens, we shifted to a new city.

In my new classroom,  I sat on the last bench,  away from the curious eyes of my classmates and teachers. Luckily,  the girl sitting next to me was friendly and started talking to me. We became very good friends.

One day, a few months later,  she came to me crying and told me that she got kicked out from her singing group for the school singing competition. I couldn’t bear to see my first friend here cry. So, I gathered a few other people and we made up a group with my friend as the lead singer.  I was relieved to see her happy until it hit me that I  sang like a dying crow! What had I got myself into? I tried my best to get out of this situation but my friend wouldn’t let me. Skeptically,  I agreed. We started practicing with her father,  who was a music teacher in another school. He would play the harmonium with all his might and we had to scream sing loud enough to hear ourselves over the music.

Now,  our school had hired a keyboard player for this competition, and one day prior to the competition,  we met him and gave him our song. But, he had never heard that song! Still, he promised he would learn to play our song in time for the competition. Well, guess what?! He didn’t. At least not properly. So he played at the lowest volume. Now remember,  we had practiced singing at the top of our voice. So now we were  singing loudly and he was playing very softly. Since my school had no auditorium, they had arranged for us to sing through the mic in the announcement room and this mic was connected to the speakers in each classroom. Because of this we couldn’t see our audience’s reaction. After our performance, we went back to our class.

When we returned, our class was staring at us, some people snickering,  some giggling and some outright laughing. One of them told us that their ears were hurting from our singing.  Why were we singing so loudly? You can imagine our condition. We were so embarrassed but there was no way to run away from there as the teacher was also present.

After a few days of constant ridicule from my peers, I decided I had had enough.  I looked them in the eye, snorted and said “Hey, at least we tried. What did you do?” And confidently walked away. Each time they commented, I replied the same thing. And that worked! They got bored  and stopped.

There were other instances too, where I had made a complete fool of myself. But what I learnt from these experiences is that the best way to overcome ridicule from our peers is to accept the failure, look them in the eye and move on. Be confident,  keep your chin up.  Don’t stop yourself from doing something you want to do,  just because you are not sure of the outcome. I guarantee one thing that you’ll surely get. Experience.

I now look back on these experiences and laugh. They are great stories to tell my kids. 

So, go on, do it. Trust me,  everyone makes gaffes.  You are not alone.