“Trey, the world isn’t black and white.” says every person I’ve ever talked to about my opinion on things. Specifically failure. I don’t mean everyone's failure because I can understand the shade of grey that is the relativity of the standard of success. However, I measure my success in accomplishments and goals that are realistic enough so that I know I can achieve them. The fact of the matter is…I haven’t accomplished enough. I haven’t done nearly as much as I would like, and I’m not thriving nearly as much as I want to. I’m floating enough so that I don’t drown. That’s failure to me. If I actively have a goal that I didn’t reach when I wanted to reach it or how I wanted to reach it, I’ve failed. If I cannot clearly say that I succeeded, I’ve failed.
I hate failure. I know that I won’t be great at everything and that everything won’t go the way I want it to, but it has to. I have to be the anomaly because if it didn’t go how I planned it, then I didn’t do what I was supposed to, and it means I’m a failure. People always call me pessimistic for this mindset or they say things like the world isn’t black and white. Not understanding that at its core, if you didn’t pass, you failed. All the things I fail to do now will snowball into a humongous ball of failure until I am the failure. I’ve also considered that it’s just my perspective and I’m thinking about it wrong, but I’m not. Success is relative to the person measuring the success but failure is you not doing something. If you didn’t get to your own version of success, then you failed.
I hate failure. I know that I won’t be great at everything and that everything won’t go the way I want it to, but it has to. I have to be the anomaly because if it didn’t go how I planned it, then I didn’t do what I was supposed to, and it means I’m a failure. People always call me pessimistic for this mindset or they say things like the world isn’t black and white. Not understanding that at its core, if you didn’t pass, you failed. All the things I fail to do now will snowball into a humongous ball of failure until I am the failure. I’ve also considered that it’s just my perspective and I’m thinking about it wrong, but I’m not. Success is relative to the person measuring the success but failure is you not doing something. If you didn’t get to your own version of success, then you failed.
I can understand how this may sound absolutely egregious, but failure is one of my biggest fears and stressors. From a very young age, failure has been frowned upon, and success came naturally to me. So much so that every time I fail it feels like the end of the world. It’s hard to cope with having a goal and not completing it. It’s even harder to cope when your inability to achieve is declining and your constant lack of motivation for said goals is eating away at you. I don’t believe this to be a search for perfection like some people have told me. I know that my pursuit of success won’t be perfect, but it should be better. I think I should be better. Sometimes I wonder where I lost the motivation to strive for better. I feel like I’m doing okay, but this is nowhere near where I know my potential goes. If I don’t reach my potential, then that feels like failure too.
To sum all of this up, I am insanely scared to fail, and it feels like I’m constantly living in it. I want to believe that I’m too hard on myself, but I look at all of my peers' accomplishments and it just reminds me of what I’m not. I do understand that failure isn’t black and white and that it comes in so many shades of grey, however, I hold the standard of my success to be just black or white. It’s very black right now, and I couldn’t even tell you where I would find the motivation to be as successful as I would like. I’ve heard a lot of critiques of my take on failure, however, this is the way I’ve been conditioned to think. And I feel like I’m failing.
Trey Sherrod
