The Fear of Success

It has been quite a while since I dedicated myself to learning a new skill. I have been maintaining my current habits for so long that I had forgotten what it meant to pick up something and really train it, test it, and perform it. The last time I had such a pursuit was when I was a competitive swimmer. It’s been rare in my adult life to have something similar with clear markers of progress. But recently I dedicated myself to learning something pretty outside of my comfort zone, and not only did I learn the skill itself, but also a few lessons about learning things in general.

I started rock climbing at the beginning of 2018 as a way to make friends after I moved to Canada. I climbed off and on, as my schedule would allow, up until moving to Chicago, where I didn’t get back into it until late 2019 and then, as well all know, the pandemic hit, shutting me down all together. I started again in November of 2020 and have been climbing two to four times a week now for the past six months. In those months I’ve progressed to V4’s and am working on V5’s for bouldering. For top rope, I recently climbed my first 5.12-, and I learned how to lead climb! I’m solidly in the intermediate/advanced category for an amateur climber and this has recently culminated in my first outdoor climbs!

I started this activity with an above average base level of fitness, but climbing utilizes skills and muscles that were still woefully underdeveloped on me. When I restarted in the fall, I was climbing V1’s and some V2’s for bouldering and I was at a solid 5.10- level for top rope climbing. If you’re not into climbing at all, just know that these are beginner/easy intermediate levels for amateur climbing. I now warm-up at a higher level than I was climbing at this point in time.

Not only were my fingers and forearms not strong enough, but mentally, I had a long way to go. Climbing isn’t so much a strength game as it is cleverness. It’s about puzzling your way through the holds and how you have to position your body to leverage them. Being flexible and strong helps with executing that vision, but you can’t execute on a plan that doesn’t exist. So I had to learn how to think through the wall instead of relying on muscle alone. 

This piece can be likened to learning technique for any new skill. It’s the process of learning the correct way to lift weights to prevent injury. It’s the process of learning the exact curve of the fingers to produce the clearest sound on a violin. It’s the process of learning the grammar of a new language, not just the vocabulary. 

The second part of the mental game that I failed to take into account was the fear. Initially, I was afraid of falling or hurting myself. When bouldering, I was afraid to take risks because nothing was there to catch me if I fell. My mind didn’t care that I wouldn’t actually fall very far (bouldering walls are almost never more than 10-15 ft high).  When lead climbing, I was afraid of hurting myself on a big fall even though that’s extremely unlikely with all the equipment protecting me. This type fear was relatively straightforward to work through. The more falls I took, and the more I practiced, the more that fear would lessen since I would know what to expect. 

The piece of fear that I wasn’t prepared for was the fear of succeeding. Learning a new skill is a fickle pursuit. When you start out, you’re terrible. This can be demoralizing, and the initial learning curve can even often be steep enough to deter people from continuing altogether. But, it is also freeing. Nobody expects anything from you at this stage of the game. You’re even allowed to not expect much from yourself, because you’re just learning the basics. 

So when you fail over and over and over again, or make silly mistakes, or ask basic questions - it’s totally ok. There’s no pressure because you’re at the bottom level, you literally have nowhere to go but up. 

When I started last fall, this is how I felt. Yes I was afraid of falling, yes I was bad, yes I would make stupid moves, but it was ok because I was new.

But then, one day I wasn’t bad. I was actually getting quite good. The improvement I experienced in my first four months back at it was thrilling. It felt like I would hit a new level every month. 

The first few months were so easy. I flew through routes and progressed very rapidly. I know that this was more due to the fact that I was fit to begin with and simply was climbing more regularly, rather than any sort of inherent talent, but it still felt amazing. Eventually that newness wore off and I started to slow down. I know I’m still improving - I can feel it - but it is much slower now and that change makes me more insecure. 

 I started seeing myself as someone who was expected to know what they were doing. Someone who needed to execute a certain amount of ability every time. I wasn’t supposed to mess around anymore, I had to focus on getting better. Every new route I completed, put more pressure on me to get to the next one. So I became afraid of completing the next level. I became afraid of the work it would take to get even better once I hit it. 

I now get intimidated more easily by people climbing super hard routes in the gym. Before, it felt like I could simply dismiss anyone climbing better than me because I was a beginner. Now, I know that they’re better than me because they’ve put in the work. When I see these people, I end up simultaneously in awe of their ability while resenting my own lack thereof. 

I fear my own success because it means I get farther and farther away from a place where I feel like I’m allowed to fail.

This can occur at any level, and it’s what makes the top of a field just as terrifying as the bottom. In order to feel progress, you have to keep pushing. Even if you become the very best, you feel the pressure to keep performing at that level, to never let up, to never stumble, to never let anything slip.

Logically, I know that this is impossible. Success-is-not-a-straight-line and all that. There will always be mistakes and there will always be setbacks - at every level. But this is a fear that I am still working through. I still get nervous and sweaty when I think about tackling something that is currently just out of my reach. I’m not afraid I won’t get it, I’ve already failed at this point. My mind asks - what happens if I crush it? 

It helps that climbing is just a hobby for me. I don’t make money from it. I don’t compete. I solely use it as a way to release my mind from work and get some extra physical activity in a day. This pressure I feel is completely self-inflicted, since I’m competitive by nature, yet I don’t want to diminish it too much because it’s what keeps me coming back.

And maybe that’s the key to any new skill - finding the balance between getting good enough to enjoy the pursuit of better, but knowing when to let off the gas just enough to not kill the fire that brought you there in the first place.

Me climbing Ancient Art in Fisher Towers near Moab Utah just two weeks ago!