Fear-Fighting as an Early Career Professional (From a 3x Fortune 500 Intern)
Fear rears its ugly head in a multitude of ways throughout our lives. The Fear-fighting series explores those ways in an effort to spark awareness that leads to fearless actions.
Being a young person with 0 experience in corporate America and also looking nothing like the majority of people who work in that space (I.e. white men) I definitely struggled with fear of failure and rejection (more on rejection later).
I feared failure because I was already told that my options were to be a doctor or engineer (not even lawyer LOL). By daring to break the status quo and pursue journalism - and later, marketing - I set myself up for a LOUD “I TOLD YOU SO” in the event that things didn’t turn out so profitable for me. In addition to that, I actually wanted to excel because I like to be excellent and I have a pricey standard of living that must be maintained. I also subconsciously feared how people would perceive me if I didn’t accomplish everything I set out to do.
This fear of failure caused me to have a very unhealthy relationship with my work. I depended on it to make me happy so much so that when I was idle for weeks at a time, I’d begin to feel sad. I would even put in extra hours at my internship even though overtime was not allowed and nobody asked me to simply because I couldn’t rest in peace until I finished all the tasks I set out for that day.
When presented with difficult assignments, I’d procrastinate because I was scared of dealing with the fact that I didn’t really know what I was doing. In reality, I should have just started in advance and sought out help.
It wasn’t until 2020, when many of us were stuck in our homes alone with our thoughts, that I realized how terribly necessary it was for me to change my ways. In the time that followed, I learned to emotionally detach myself from my work. I will always aim for excellence but if I fall short, that says nothing about my identity or self-worth. It simply means I am a human being, who made a mistake – not unlike the other 7 billion humans in the world. Moreover, if people witnessed my failures and mocked me, said “I told you so..”or had any other unkind response, what would happen? Sure, it might sting for a bit but eventually, I’d dust myself off, learn from the experience, and try again.
We owe it to ourselves to pursue our dreams no matter how crazy they seem to the people around us; however, fear of failure should not be our driving force. It is literally a lie that keeps us up at night and convinces us that our errors will result in some great doom.
In reality, the Bible makes it very clear that the peace of God should reign in our hearts (Colossians 3:15) and our full faith and trust should be in Him (Proverbs 3:5-6). When we operate from a heart of peace, trusting God to prosper us in His divine time, we don’t have any reason to fear. We can work from a place of contentment knowing that eventually we will see the fruits of our labor (Psalm 126:5-6). Even if it takes a while - months or even years - we will remain faithful rather than fearful because we are convinced that God’s word over us simply MUST come to pass (Isaiah 55:10-11).
