Planning to fail?

Lately, I have started noticing how my mind is constantly trying to avoid failure, rather than working towards success. It became very evident when I first decided to do a 1 week 1 kg challenge. As I started to write the blog post announcing my challenge, I almost scared myself into quitting before I'd even begun. Thoughts like "what if I can't make it", "I will be publicly humiliated", "I'm not good enough" and "Now everyone will see what a failure you really are" raced through my mind. 

I noticed these fears, and decided to not let them stop me. But I also wondered how many times these fears have stopped me from doing something that I want to do. I am not always as aware of them, or if I am, I believe them and give up before I've even started. Frankly, I'm a little scared to think of all the things I've missed just because of my gut reaction of "you're not good enough".

I recently read You CAN be thin by Marissa Peer, and she talks (among other things) about this. Her advice is to tell yourself that you are enough, and repeat it until you believe it. I've started doing that, and I've also started being my own cheerleader instead of my own worst enemy. Well, I'm trying to anyways, my inner critic has been a part of me for years, so the habit takes a while to break. But at least I'm trying. :)

Of course, when I first started c25k, I was attacked by the self doubt monster. When I looked at the schedule ahead of me, I quickly decided that this was way too hard for me, impossible even. Yet, others who hated running had managed to come out alive and with a new-found passion for running, so I gave it a shot after all.

The first few weeks were okay, but as soon as the running time doubled from 1,5 minutes to 3 minutes, my doubts resurfaced. You may remember that I very nearly convinced myself I'd reached my limit. Luckily, I refused to give in, and managed it just fine. There and then I decided to stop believing that the next run would be too hard, and think positive instead.

For a long time, I actually managed to do so. I cheered myself on. At one point I even started feeling like I looked forward to a new challenge. Things were looking good. Then the dreaded week 5 of the c25k happened. From the very beginning I'd feared this week. Somehow I had managed to push it from my mind, thinking it was way in the future. Then, all of the sudden it was there, and there was no way I could quell my self doubts this time. Really, whomever thought that it was a good idea to go from running 8 minutes straight to 20 - TWENTY - minutes straight? They should be locked up, crazy people!

I was quite sure I'd never make it, my fear of failure was warning me against trying - no good could come out of this. Well, I'm very stubborn, and I hadn't come all this way just to quit. So I set out to prove myself wrong. I kept Jillian in my mind, and I envisioned the triumph of being able to blog about it afterwards. And I DID IT! Not only did I run 20 minutes straight, I went on to run really fast (for me - remember my definition of running at this point is 6 km an hour - babies could probably crawl faster) for a while afterwards, just to quiet my doubts once and for all. Take THAT, evil self doubt! Totally knocked-out there, inner critic!

Image by digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So now I'm more determined than ever to not let my fears stop me. I will not be planning to fail anymore, I am going to plan success instead. :)