Fear of it not working out

While there are plenty of things that are implicitly frowned upon in our culture, things like divorce, termination, expulsion, liquidation, rejection or humiliation certainly top the list.

Needless to say that most people don’t like the experience of living through and with things not working out (especially in public). A natural side-effect being that our’s is a culture where risk is to be avoided, and where failure is feared above all else.

Instead, we like to sure of things.

We prize confidence and assuredness and absolutes. And we generally work overtime to ensure (for ourselves) that the things we commit to will work out in all the ways we expect.

We avoid risk for fear of failure. And we avoid much of anything that carries with it a pang of indecision or doubt.

Thing is, fear of it not working out is as bad excuse as any for not trying to make it work. And—given the stakes, the potential upside versus the potential downside, the fact that you can likely overcome the worst scenario possible—not trying is merely striving to not succeed.