The Fear Inside Ambition
El miedo dentro de la ambición
A student shares the sting of a narrow job rejection, which surfaces old feelings of inadequacy. The conversation turns to how self-limiting narratives serve as protection against deeper fears, and what it means to pursue one's potential honestly.
The Fear Inside Ambition
A student shares the sting of a narrow job rejection, which surfaces old feelings of inadequacy. The conversation turns to how self-limiting narratives serve as protection against deeper fears, and what it means to pursue one's potential honestly.
I just went through several rounds of an interview process and ultimately didn't get the job. I just got off a feedback call with the hiring person, and it came down to the ways in which my stories, meant to demonstrate my soft skills, fell slightly short. There was just another candidate that performed better in that way. It brought up insecurities and questions, because I think of myself as a good listener and someone with soft skills. There was also another position with the same company, a more technical job, and I didn't pass the technical interview for that one either.
It was a role I was excited about and felt really aligned with. I was thinking they were going to give me the job, and they admitted it was very close. At the same time, I've struggled in my life with a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and sometimes not even training enough to be really performant at something because of a limiting belief. It all flooded to the surface with the closeness of this job opportunity.
I know enough now that this is just how it goes. It was close, and I need to move on, keep sending out applications, keep refining my interview process. The feedback was actually very helpful. And yet there's this undercurrent of that old feeling of not being good enough, a feeling that I haven't in the past identified as worthy enough to go through the training properly that would be landing me these jobs. Something about a lack of rigor, whatever the opposite of that Rocky training montage is. It's stirring some old feelings in the context of narrowly not getting this role.
There's a lot there to dive into.
The natural pain of rejection
Naturally, when we get rejected, it's painful. To expect that not to happen is a bit unrealistic. I'm not saying you're expecting it not to happen, but generally when we get rejected, it's going to be painful. It's natural. There's not much more to do other than, "Oh, that sucks. I wanted that. That hurts." That's one part of it. To try to be completely fine without any sense of pain around that situation is an unrealistic expectation. It's like not being human. Of course we are human. We're more than human, but we're human. It's not about getting rid of the human part.
From victim of beliefs to author of them
Now, beyond that, there are the unnecessary struggles, what can be cleared or seen through, and there are many approaches to that. One, for example: the sense of not being good enough. You talked about it as limiting beliefs, and as if that has been a cause or reason why things have been the way they are. That's a valid approach to start with. When you're beginning with something and you've never really seen those beliefs, some of those narratives and how they operate, it's a good introduction to consider them as things that are appearing and happening to you. You see, "I have this belief, I have these thoughts. They're invasive, they take over, I can't control them," and then you feel like a victim of them. That's an appropriate approach as an introduction.
But once you see that, if you stay with that framework, that itself becomes a limiting interpretation. It removes a certain kind of possible freedom and keeps you in the position of a victim. That's where I take a different approach, and I think it's appropriate for you now: don't see it as "I have this conditioning, this past, this thing that happens to me, and that is why I'm stuck." Turn it around. See it as: why am I choosing these beliefs? What am I getting from them? How are they serving me?
I'm sure you can say, "Well, it's serving me in that it's a kind of masochism, a self-defeating, self-sabotaging thing." But go beyond that. Usually what I find is that it's helping you not experience something. You can move from "I can see now that this mind is doing something, and I've unconsciously been at its mercy" to something deeper. Once you see that, the framing needs to turn, because that habitual form of thinking: you're not a victim of it. You're choosing it.
At a deeper level, you're choosing it. You could go back into a narrative: "I'm choosing it because of this innate self-sabotaging quality." Again, that's part of the same narrative of being a victim of some quality. Beneath that, the real approach is: why am I choosing this narrative? What is it helping me with?
What the narrative protects against
The short answer is that it's helping you avoid discomfort, pain, and fear. So what kind of fear and pain is it helping you avoid? You can look into that and find it in yourself.
Generally speaking, there is an aspect of fear and insecurity about the world. In this particular situation, there will always be candidates that are better in different ways than you, than any of us. Very few people are at the absolute top, and if they are, it's still going to be temporary, and it's not going to be in every way. There's a risk and insecurity to life in that sense. You're competing.
So now, how do I face that fear and insecurity, the insecurity of life itself, the sense that there are no guarantees? Do I choose narratives that keep me constrained, or do I face that directly and see, for example, how I can develop my potential more fully?
The comfort in staying small
Something closer to the norm is that we don't develop our potential fully. There is a certain comfort in limiting and constraining our sense of our potential. This is why a lot of these movies and stories are so attractive. You mentioned Rocky. There's a sense of: it's true, he pushed and pushed and pushed and made it. There is an aspect of life that is like that.
It was really interesting to feel, through several rounds of interviews, that during the earlier ones that went really well, I felt that adrenaline. I went for a run; I just had to channel this energy of optimism and enthusiasm and excitement. It felt actually very rich to experience that, and then also to experience the heavy feeling afterward. Not an overwhelming sense of failure, but just fascinating to watch where my mind and my spirit go depending on what happens in this relatively high-stakes thing in my life.
And when you said there's a comfort in not developing yourself to your full potential: that's interesting, because actually cultivating ourselves and our abilities keeps us more safe.
It's true. It's the wiser approach. And there are obviously positive parts of the experience of developing our potential; ultimately it's very positive. But in the process, going back to the movie you brought up: for Rocky, the process is not fun. He's getting up, he's running around town, all that pain. And does he have a guarantee he's going to win at the end? No. Otherwise there's no reality to it. He doesn't know. He could be completely destroyed.
The delusion of guaranteed success
To believe you're going to win and succeed is delusion. If you are approaching it from that perspective, you're not facing the reality of the uncertainty. And I'm not just talking about external circumstances. It's really about what's true in us. We know at a deeper level that we don't really know. I could tell myself, "I'm going to make it, it's going to happen, I'm the greatest." But we know we could fail, because part of us knows the truth: there are no guarantees.
Any narrative that tries to manage and cope with that by telling ourselves unreal stories is not going to be successful. It does help, if I'm completely immersed in a narrative of "I can't, I can't, I can't," to balance that out with a positive narrative: "What if? I can." I can psych myself up, but that's only a temporary approach for balancing out a negative narrative. Similarly, if we're in a very delusional, grandiose narrative, we usually don't need to undo that ourselves. Life will do it for us.
From what you're saying, it sounds like if we were to really step to the edge of what we can do and train, maybe in boxing, as hard as we can, the act of doing that is the act of approaching the fear of no guarantees. And the act of doing that is the act of just facing the potential of fear and pain.
The potential and the fear: it's right there.
And yet going in that direction is actually more, we become fitter, we become more mentally and psychologically fit as well.
Exactly. And if you're going in the direction of a true calling, a deep desire, you start actualizing. There's something that happens at a very deep level, at the level of psyche, soul, body, which is harmony and health.
Actualizing vs. waking up
I want to highlight that this is different from waking up. It's a different thing, but it's very relevant and important. Don't have the idea that this process will eventually take us to that thing we call waking up. It might make the journey or the process easier, but it's not what makes that happen. At the same time, it's very important and relevant.
My experience was that after one interview in particular that went badly, I was remembering other times in my life where I'd been in dangerous situations, like spinning out a car, moments of consequential failure and the alertness that can bring about. I experienced a little bit of that, where a lot of normal day-to-day patterns were evaporated.
Facing fear consciously instead of accidentally
You could come to that by facing fear consciously, because that's what happens in a moment of that extreme kind of thing, like a car accident. All of the fear we've been trying to avoid and cope with becomes very present. We move through it. We are momentarily not dedicated one hundred percent to avoiding it, and so all of the avoidance mechanisms drop and we have moments of clarity.
But you could approach this differently instead of through thrill-seeking, which I'm not saying you do. I don't actually think that's your personality type, but some people become daredevils or thrill-seekers to get those moments of mental emptiness. That's not a lasting approach; it's like a crutch.
If instead you see what you're most deeply afraid of, aside from death: instead of facing death by jumping off a plane (which there's nothing wrong with), if we see that there's something we're afraid of that feels almost equal to dying, those fears can come up. They have to do with living abundantly, with living freely. When we approach them, we're facing those fears consciously and directly.
The fear of abundance and freedom being like the fear of being a boxing champion, the fear of what could happen if I really go for it?
The fear of going for the real thing
There's a fear of actualizing, a fear of success, a fear of things going well. But there's also just the fear of pursuit itself. Imagine the thing I really want to do the most is to be, say, a computer scientist. But I'm afraid of all of the challenges, and because it's such a big deal if I fail, I choose something else instead, like "technical media expert," something that's not the real thing. I go for something that minimizes the whole endeavor, makes it simpler, makes it easier, but I'm not actually doing the thing I want to do. The thing I want to do is a lot bigger, a lot scarier; there's more at stake in every way. It's harder to face.
And as you mentioned, there's also the fear of getting what you want, of succeeding, of things going big, of expansion of well-being and joy. Sometimes we're so addicted to distress that moments of joy can be terrifying.
Yeah, there's also the fear of diverting all your time and energy in a direction that is risky.
Right, and that's fine in that hypothetical situation if I don't keep my eye away from the target. If my deeper desire is really this other thing, but I'm going to do the safer thing temporarily as a means to move forward because it's a safer bet, that's proper strategy. But if I tell myself I don't want that other thing, that I really want this thing instead, it's going to haunt me.
Because then you're lying to yourself to avoid the pain.
You're avoiding a deep calling, hypothetically, if that were the deep calling. And what you brought up about diverting your energy: yes, there's a huge risk in investing time and energy to develop something that has no guarantees.
Which is not necessarily wise. It could be, but it's not certain.
Listening deeply enough to know the direction
The wisdom will be in whether I'm listening deeply enough. You don't know with certainty that this is what it is, but if we listen deeply enough, we are able to know what is not the direction. "That's not the direction." And then something keeps calling, and you explore it, and it keeps reconfirming the calling.
I'm not talking about some big vocation. It could be simple things. It could be anything. It could be having a really stable job so I can have weekends to go to the mountains for hikes. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Because being in nature every weekend is my heaven. And then I start doing that, and my whole life makes sense. Everything starts to work out and fall into place. I'm simplifying, but you get my point.
Or it could be something like, "I need to write," or "I need to compose music." It could be that kind of thing as well, but not necessarily. We don't all have those artistic, creative vocations.
What matters most right now
But for you specifically, you're becoming a father. Maybe the best thing, the wisest thing, is to prioritize for some time getting a good, stable job. Maybe that's the biggest thing for you right now, and maybe that's the scariest thing and the most challenging thing. I can't tell you that; you could tell me.
Yeah, it feels like an important component of peace of mind right now.
There's a quote from my teacher: "The highest form of meditation is to do what we have to do."
That's good. I love that.
Yeah, I resonate with that right now.
Good. Thank you.