The fear of failure – this is something no one wants to admit, but I am feeling the strain of it at the moment. 

Simple. 

Real. 

Annoying.

This is uncharted territory for me. I have not ever really been scared of failure. Sure, I don’t like to fail, but I embrace it. This is one of my life mottos. 

It has gotten hard all of the sudden, and, of course, this is fleshing out through golf. I sat down and talked to my Coach about all of this, which I did not really want to do if I’m being honest. I did not want to be weak. I needed help though. I felt stuck in my head, and I didn’t know how to get out. 

I have to remember that I don’t need to figure stuff out on my own or appear like I have it all together. It is ok to not know. It is ok to be weak. It is ok to be stuck. This is actually a sign of strength.

I asked him, “How do I get rid of this pressure to perform well?”

Obviously he didn’t have a concrete answer for me. How do you answer something like that with a sentence? It was an incredible conversation though. I am thankful for a coach that cares. Just by talking to someone I admitted a few things that I did not want to say because they felt weak.

This is what I figured out.

I do not want to fail myself or the people around me. I have worked so hard to get where I am in this game. That is part of the problem. Now that I have reached my big goal of Varsity golf, I don’t want it to slip. I am holding on so tight to this title.

I know, silly. 

Whether I get out on the course this season and shoot 100 or 130, I am still me.

He said your trying to bake a cake that is already been baked, now we are just putting the icing on it. I’ve got to stop trying and just do what I know.

I often try to relate this game of golf to volleyball because volleyball is something that I know, but you really can’t. Volleyball was easy to stay out of my head. It was too fast to think about anything other than what was going on right in front of me, and not every contact mattered. 

Golf is so quiet. 

There is so much time in between swings.

There is no one next to you.

I operate better in the chaos. I am calm in the chaos because it pulls me out of my own head.

The quiet is harder for me. I am an analytical person. When I have a problem in the classroom, I think my way out of it. I can’t think my way through golf. It doesn’t work like that. 

I know now that when I am alone with myself and get caught in my head, it is detrimental to my performance. 

So then the solution is to stop thinking.

Wrong. 

I can’t tell myself to stop thinking because then I start thinking about the things I don’t want to think about. I have to distract my mind. I need to walk into a tournament with one word to tell myself when my swing gets wonky and a song to sing in my head.

I also need to change the negative thoughts to positive. Instead of feeling the anxiety of stepping up on the first tee box, I change it to butterflies. Butterflies are good. They show excitement. 

Instead of thinking “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just hit that bad of a shot,” I change it to “I am so excited to hit this next shot the best way I can.”

Then there is another part of this equation. What I score in a tournament changes nothing good or bad. My teammates view me the same way, Coach views me the same way, and, more importantly, my God views me the same way. 

The thing I say when I count my scorecard at the end of a tournament can’t be I don’t care about what it says. I am always going to care. It has to be, “I do not place my success on that scorecard, no matter what it says.” 

After thinking about all of this for a while, I ask myself why spend so much time trying to figure this out?

Why care so much about a game that I am going to be done with in three months?

First I don’t want to just throw in the towel because it’s hard. Second this is an issue in me. It’s in my soul, and I don’t just want to cruise by it. 

One day I know that there will be a situation where I will feel this fear of failure again. I want to get this figured out, so that when I am in a place that it matters more, I am not going to have to go through this hard part. I will have the tools to manage it.

I see the bigger picture. 

Where do I go from here?

I embrace the struggle.

I welcome the adversity. A very big part of the reason I play sports is that I find out a lot about myself at a faster rate. I am put in situations that test me and that force pressure on me. I am thankful for the opportunity to struggle now in a much smaller environment where it doesn’t matter as much.

I call truth to mind. In the Bible it says that thoughts and feelings can be deceitful, so that means I don’t trust some of these statements shuffling through my head. Some of them are planned attacks from the enemy. I take every thought captive, sift through all of it, and figure out what I need to keep and what I need to release. 

I realize that there is more to life than just this game. I am so much more than anything I can do on the course. 

I remind myself I have already succeeded. I have won before I take my first swing of the day because I have what it takes. 

Thank you Jesus for your truth. Thank you for caring about the little things that matter to me. There is no better place to be than in your restful presence. In future failures, I remember that those failures don’t define me. They are teachers for me.  What Jesus did on the cross for me is what defines me. I am greatly loved by a God that desperately pursues me. Thank you.

Verses for your own conversation (Jeremiah 31:3, 2 Corinthians 10:5, 2 Corinthians 13:9)