The Yoda Conundrum

HOW FEAR MAY BE UNDERMINING YOUR POTENTIAL

I used to be afraid of trying.

Like all kids, I was born with natural talents. Communicating, connecting, understanding, and problem solving came really easily to me.

In school, I could listen to the teacher while doodling and get the right answer when called on for not paying attention.

On the other hand, pretty much anything that required my body, coordination, or spatial reasoning was an utter disaster.

I fell down a lot.

I sucked at sports.

I was the kid on the class trip who got her bumper car stuck the first minute of the ride and never got out of the corner.

This meant that as a child, the thing I had to try to do in school was not get humiliated on the playground (or in the halls, or the cafeteria or the gymnasium).

Luckily, it turned out that I could save myself by being funny. Laugh first, or make an actual fall look like a comedy act, and kids started laughing with me rather than at me.

It was a coping mechanism that worked.

Until it didn’t.

In high school, I used to leave my books on the bus at night and bang out my homework on the morning ride, and I did pretty well in spite of it.

I didn’t know how to study.

In college when the work got harder, I didn’t know what to do. I grew increasingly afraid of finding out that the one thing I had going for me (being smart) was a well gone dry. (Classic fixed mindset – but that’s for another post.)

Re-enter the clown.

It was easier to be her.

Everyone wanted to be her friend. She was “smart”, intuitive and fun. She’d listen to you, help you through anything, and then take you out to party until sunrise.

Academically things didn’t go as well.

I underperformed. I hid. I failed.

And still, it felt easier than trying, easier than finding out I didn’t really have what it took.

That’s when the dreams started.

The setting was always my dorm room and there was always some sort or swarm, infestation, or unstoppable flow – insects, people, smoke, water. The swarm never hurt me in these dreams, it just confused me and made me feel bad.

I couldn’t figure it out.

I was living off campus at this point – why always my 1st dorm room? Why did I keep dreaming different versions of the same thing?

One morning, I asked myself the question differently. Instead of why, I asked myself what do they, the dorm room – the swarms, represent?

The answer came like a thunderbolt.

That room had become a symbol of unrealized potential. And all of the “swarms” were life passing me by while I sat and watched.

Gut punch.

In that moment everything changed. Although it took me many more years to understand that falling flat on your face – even a hundred times – isn’t failing, it’s learning, and that learning – aka trying – is the only path to getting what you want.

Failure only happens when you don’t try.

I’m 53 years old and to this day, whenever I’m about to step into something bigger, scarier, or more difficult, the dream of the dorm room comes back.

Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, it’s hard for me to admit this, but I disagree.

Doing is easy.

The hard part is having the guts to try.