I have a confession to make: I’m scared of failure. I’m scared of rejection too. I avoid doing things if I don’t think I can succeed. I don’t allow myself to want something if I don’t think I can have it.
And I have an even bigger confession to make: it doesn’t work. I still want things—big, scary, wonderful things—that I can only dream of ever having. I still stick out my neck and dream too big, aim too high, and fall down face first when I get shot down. I want to travel the world but student loans loom over my head and “responsible adults” don’t waste their money on train tickets when there are bills that can be paid off instead. I dream of doing cool and amazing work at cool and amazing places but I have a toxic sinking fear that my work is not good enough, my words are not polished enough, I don’t have the right look, the right vibe, the right portfolio of work to ever run with the big dogs so I put off internship opportunities and applications. I suffer from rare but crippling bouts of self doubt and I, like most artists, crave validation because my imposter syndrome tells me that I’m just not good enough.
And yet my best work is all stuff I was afraid to show anyone.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s the secret ingredient. As Brené Brown says in her one of her amazing TED talks:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There’s nothing more vulnerable than that.”
So as Victor Hugo said, “if we must suffer, let us suffer nobly.” Therefore if I must fail, let me fail spectacularly and learn all the more from it. If I am rejected, let it be painfully blunt so I can get up a move on. And if I’m under-qualified let me be brave and/or stupid enough apply anyway, because the worst they can say is no, which is always the answer when you’re too scared to even ask. Because being vulnerable means I am courageous enough to try.
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