By: Aliza Panjwani, M.A.
People say that the ballet is among the most challenging styles of dance to learn. Indeed, it is an intricate, highly sophisticated art form requiring years of disciplined training. But you don’t have to be a professional ballerina to dance one of the most difficult dances of all time: the constant sidestepping and pushing-pulling we do avoid/deny our fears whilst trying to achieve our dreams. The thing is we don’t train ourselves to approach this life-long dance the same way a disciplined dancer approaches learning a new move.
The human condition is such that we are hard-wired to move towards things, people, events, and internal states that feel rewarding and positive while simultaneously moving away from those that feel threatening or negative. Talk about complicated choreography! The crux of it is that to achieve and achieve greatly, we risk failing and, in fact, we may even fail. In changing our circumstances for the better, we risk making them worse, at least for a spell. To follow his dream of film-making, Steven risks rejection of his application to film school. To become a successful comedian, Jerry risks getting up in front of an audience and his jokes falling completely flat.
Sometimes, taking that risk and sitting with the discomfort feels so aversive that we end up not moving towards our goals at all. The desire to escape, suppress, or push away from negative thoughts, emotions, images and memories is known as experiential avoidance. We ALL do it, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Instead of going to publishers with your book idea, you may sit at home and not even try à experiential avoidance. Instead of working on your application, you may binge watch a TV series à experiential avoidance. Other times, you might try to—and even succeed in—convincing yourself that you won’t fail at all. For example, you may try to tell yourself that your jokes won’t ever fall flat during your comedy set à experiential avoidance.
In RE & CBT, these approaches would be considered unhelpful in the long-term. Despite wanting to master the dance, what if the ballerina let fear of falling keep her from practicing her pirouette OR told herself that she won’t fall even though falling was an inevitable part of learning the move? What if, instead, the ballerina radically accepted that she would fall, and that when she did, it would not define her worth or entire capability, that she could tolerate the negative emotions associated with falling, and that even if she fell, it wouldn’t be the most awful, atrocious thing in the world.
Here’s the thing—Joanne K. Rowling? She went on to write one of the greatest book series of all time; she was rejected constantly. Steven Spielberg went on to become one of the greatest directors and producers of all time; he was rejected from film school not once…but twice. Jerry Seinfeld went on to have one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time; he was literally booed off the stage the first time he performed. These individuals worked to master the art oftrying again, failing again, and leaning to fail better (~Samuel Beckett) on their road to achieving their dreams.
Think back to a time where you tried to sidestep the fear of failure rather than confronting it, and it kept you from achieving a goal. How would you choreograph your moves differently? What you tell yourself and what actions would you have taken instead?
