Fear of Success
My friend,
I just finished week one of my "Game of Life" project. I assigned point values to various tasks I wanted to do this week, and tracked how often I did them. The points were incentives to do things the way I knew they should be done, for hours of uninterrupted coding and reading for example, rather than sporadic jumping back and forth. I tracked it on a spreadsheet, the method is still a little awkward, I'll go into more detail once I've refined it a bit. But, the results were weaker than I expected. I'd say I accomplished approximately 30% of what I intended to last week.
Ok, so, why then? Were the goals too hard? Maybe a little, but I certainly COULD have done much better. They were challenging, but not in skill or time or even unpleasantness, but rather in willpower and self control and creativity. I was aware of the goals every day, and the goal of updating the spreadsheet before bed received a 70% score, one of the highest of all. The goals were not arbitrary, meaningless challenges imposed on me by a self help guru or game designer, but meaningful to the goals of my life. And yet...
And yet...
Ever since I was pointed at "Stuck in the Middle with Bruce" by the lesswrong community, I've been thinking about the reasons why we lose. Why do we lose where we otherwise could have won?
I started this website because I wanted a place where I could write and publish without having to worry how it would effect my personal life. Does that even make sense? I was explaining to a friend how hard I find it, to sit down and create something and send it off into the world. He is a writer, an established sports blogger and currently writing a book and a screenplay based on characters from his own life, so he knew all about what I was talking about. But he drew me to an interesting conclusion. Was I really afraid that I would write something bad? Bad writing abounds everywhere, nobody cares about it, and nothing I write is evil or profane enough that I need to hide it for those reasons.
No, my real fear is success. What if I accidentally write something really good and insightful? People are going to expect that same level of quality every time. I am going to have to defend my opinion in public, talk about it at parties, or god forbid I become an expert. People will think I know all kinds of things that I don't, and I won't be able to get anything real done.
And worst of all, a fear that has been ingrained in me since childhood, I could be seen as becoming great. Not the greatness of the tabloids, a person from another world, whom we can only glimpse at a distance and wonder at. Instead, it's the emerging greatness that is a person right beside you, who used to be like you, should be like you, but is becoming more. Not more than you. Entirely more. It's really infuriating.
People really get upset at emerging greatness. I used to think it was because they themselves were incapable of becoming great. But these days I think, instead, it is the shell that protects them from having to become great. By looking down on greatness, claiming that great goals and ambitions are impractical or naive or even selfish and egomaniacal, they are simultaneously building walls against their own failure to achieve.
Don't believe that this exists? Go down to your local elementary school, 2nd grade should be old enough. Ask the teacher to pull together her top five students. Ask these students what the other kids think when you raise your hand in class. Find the kid with the tattered notebook and ask him what happens when you say you want to be an artist. How many parents, when they hear their child wants to be an artist, set them up for success? And how many chuckle "knowingly," knowing that they themselves once had similar dreams, but are now comfortably losing, as will everyone, eventually.
Bruce does his job best when he plants his seeds before you've even begun. Hell, an hour ago I was staring at this blank page, thinking how I wasn't in the mood to write today. I spent 18 of the last 24 hours in bed with chills and fever. I was tired. The chair is uncomfortable on my achy body. I don't know what to write.
The fact is, Bruce's job is easiest if he catches you early. Now, with half a page of writing, his job is much harder. Look for him to show up early, and often. One of your best defenses is to start.
So I got a blanket. Made some tea. Put a pillow on the chair. And started typing.
I'm not going to defeat Bruce with a single post. I'm not even going to totally call him out.
But I'm going to keep looking for him. Because he's there. The secret mastermind behind all the times I lose and don't have to. Because I am not a creature barely struggling to survive. I am a creator, an artist, a man of virtue and greatness. Anyone who opposes that is my enemy. And he will be defeated.
One trick I've learned is that, while it's hard to recognize Bruce directly, he comes, in me, with certain smoke signals. I will feel tired, hungry, thirsty. I will desire creature comforts, alcohol, relaxation. These are all signs that Bruce is at work. An hour and a half ago, I was wandering around my apartment, getting food, water, tea, pillows, blankets, wanting to go lie down and zone out. And, there too was Bruce, telling me I didn't have to write this today, I was sick, I'm already off to a rotten start this week anyway, just go to bed and get a fresh start tomorrow.
To be honest, the biggest thing that got me writing was you. I knew that I'd promised you this article, and I didn't want to let you down. I think this is an important asset to success, having supportive encouragement... I'm going to have to think about how to incorporate this into my Game of Life... certainly, we don't want to be blasting our innermost goals to the world a la Facebook. But, I think having a circle of people who you share your goals with and are accountable to would certainly be helpful.
To summarize: Bruce exists. He wants to get up in your stuff, early and often, and prevent it from happening. He sees all the new responsibilities and headaches that success would bring, even if he doesn't see all the great benefits to yourself and the world if you succeed. He will lure you with simple pleasures, and taunt you with sarcastic remarks. He will ally with Other Peoples Bruces to make sure that none of you step out of line at all, and make the rest of us look bad.
He is the enemy. He must be sought and destroyed, or he will destroy us all. The best way to defeat him is to start creating, and to refuse to stop, for where there is creation, there is no Bruce, and where there is Bruce, there is no creation.
Talk soon my friend,
Phaedrus
