Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne W. Dyer

Author:Wayne W. Dyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Someday I’ll walk away

And be free

And leave the sterile ones

Their secure sterility.

I’ll leave without a forwarding address

And walk across some barren wilderness

To drop the world there.

Then wander free of care

Like an unemployed Atlas.*

Achievement as Security

But the “walking away” to “be free,” as Kavanaugh puts it, is difficult as long as you carry around the conviction that you must achieve. Fear of failure is a powerful fear in our society, one inculcated in childhood and often carried throughout life.

You may be surprised to hear this, but failure does not exist. Failure is simply someone else’s opinion of how a certain act should have been completed. Once you believe that no act must be performed in any specific other-directed way, then failing becomes impossible.

There may, however, be occasions when you will fail in some given task according to your own standards. The important thing here is not to equate the act with your own self-worth. Not to succeed in a particular endeavor is not to fail as a person. It is simply not being successful with that particular trial at that particular present moment.

Try to imagine using failure as a description of an animal’s behavior. Consider a dog barking for fifteen minutes, and someone saying, “He really isn’t very good at barking, I’d give him a “C.” How absurd! It is impossible for an animal to fail because there is no provision for evaluating natural behavior. Spiders construct webs, not successful or unsuccessful webs. Cats hunt mice; if they aren’t successful in one attempt, they simply go after another. They don’t lie there and whine, complaining about the one that got away, or have a nervous breakdown because they failed. Natural behavior simply is! So why not apply the same logic to your own behavior and rid yourself of the fear of failure.

The push to achieve comes from three of the most self-destructive words in our culture. You’ve heard them and used them thousands of times. Do your best! This is the cornerstone of the achievement neurosis. Do your best at everything you do. What’s wrong with taking a mediocre bicycle ride, or going for an average walk in the park? Why not have some activities in your life which you just do, rather than do to the best of your ability? The do-your-best neurosis can keep you from trying new activities and enjoying old ones.

At one time I counseled an eighteen-year-old high school senior named Louann, who was imbued with the achievement standard. Louann was a straight A student, and had been since she first set foot in a school. She worked long tedious hours on her school work, and as a result she had no time for being a person. She was a veritable computer of book knowledge. Yet Louann was painfully shy around boys, never even having held hands let alone dated. She had developed a nervous twitch which came into play whenever we talked about this side of her personality. Louann had placed all of her emphasis on being an achieving student at the expense of her total development.

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