Day 9 Journal July 7, 2011 What am I afraid of?

I was having trouble thinking of something to write about today. It has been a long week with a lot of writing to do, both in this class and in another class, so my brain is a bit numb at this point. I decided to look at some of the suggestions that I jotted down from the Daily Journal Prompts and one in particular caught my eye, that being "What am I afraid of?"  I bet you think I am going to write about something like spiders or dogs or clowns or something like that. Guess again. I am really not afraid of many things at all except one. What I am truly most afraid of is Failure. I am afraid of being a failure in school, a failure as a nurse, a failure as wife, a failure as a mother and a failure as a member of society. I don't know where this fear of failure comes from exactly or why it exists in my psyche. It seems that early in my school years, learning came easy to me, so I got pretty good grades without having to work at it very hard. But then, it became expected of me to continue those grades, and I became afraid to fail. Being afraid of failure has caused me to work very hard and give 110% to anything I do, because in my mind, anything less is failure. It has made me place high expectations on myself that I sometimes have to struggle to live up to. I find myself taking on extra responsibilities at work to prove myself, then I have trouble asking for help, because in my head, asking for help is failing to do the job myself. I am endlessly checking out the deadlines for class assignments to be sure they are turned in on time or even early, because anything less is failure.  I also check my grades at least once or twice a week to be sure that I am still maintaining and not failing.  Not that I am anywhere near failing, but who says that fears have to make sense? I stress during corporate and state surveys because I am afraid that something I have done or not done will negatively affect our scores, despite the fact that we consistently do well at these. I tend to take any failure personally, even those of my children. If they do poorly in a class, I feel it is my failure as a parent to set proper standards and give proper assistance. I am trying to learn to overcome this, and to use those stumbling blocks we all run up against as learning opportunities. I am trying to learn that I can only be responsible for myself and my actions and not those of others. I don't know if I will ever get over this fear, but perhaps I can learn to manage it and use it to my advantage. Striving for perfection does have some advantages, don't you think?