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I’m Done With Trying Not To Fail

by Jan 08, 2017
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I’m Done With Trying Not To Fail

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve said this before. I don’t need to get into it, but basically, if I wanted to make a change about myself, I wouldn’t wait for the New Year to do it; I would just do it. For some reason or another, this change did just happen to coincide with the start of 2017, so fuck it. I’m just going to run with it.

I’m done with trying not to fail.

To be completely blunt, I’m not sure how I got into the job that I have today. When I was applying for it, I was going up against people who were significantly more qualified than myself. People who had done this shit before, people who could reference their personal experience when they’re talking about what they would implement to change our side of the organization. I had nothing. In fact, I spent the first six months in my new role erring on the side of caution so as to not confirm what I figured people were talking about: that I was under-qualified and doomed to fail.

But after six months, I came to the realization that, that wasn’t what people were saying. There was no giant conspiracy amongst my peers to expose me as a fraud and there were no people actively waiting to watch me fuck up. It was all a part of a narrative that I built for myself, boiling down to a lack of self-confidence and some weird kind of mental shit that I’ve had since I was 17 and didn’t start on the football team.

A quick Google search will tell you that this is called Imposter Syndrome. I won’t bring you down with the details, but basically the term was coined in the late ‘70s by American psychologists who were researching behaviors of highly successful people. They found that roughly two out of every five people felt this way; that, despite external evidence of their success and general bad-assery, they were “frauds.” Now, that’s not to say that I’m highly successful. Far from it. What I’m getting at is that other people feel like this. A lot of them. And if you do, you’re not alone.

So, you know what? I’m fucking sick of it. I spent six months trying not to royally fuck everything up instead of trying to succeed— something that I should have been doing from the start— and I absolutely hated it. I’m going to push myself. I’m going to step on some toes. I’m going to show that I deserve to be where I am today, and that I’m hungry for more.

I’m not really sure what the future holds for me. I’ll push myself to do things that I’ve never done before, sure. I might succeed. I’ll probably fail a few times. But that’s not something to be afraid of anymore. The thought is no longer, “Oh God, I fucked up, this is the end.” It’s, “Okay, so I fucked up. How can I fix it and make sure that it doesn’t happen again?” This is a completely different approach on how I’ve traditionally handled things, and that, my friends, is refreshing. So from here on out, let’s fucking crush it.

Image via Shutterstock

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Charlie

Using sarcasm as a defense mechanism since 1993. At any given moment I'm either tired, drunk, or stressed out. Get at me at charliepgp@gmail.com or whatever.

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