the big F

For as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to become a cricketer. I spent most of my teenage years on the cricket ground. 

I was never really as good at it as I would’ve liked to be. But I was always fiercely competitive. I tried to give my best, win matches, contribute as much as I could. 

And even though it’s been two years since I stopped playing, I have always had this deep sense of regret. That I wasn’t able to perform to my potential. 

Recently, I started playing again. Not to prove a point, but to enjoy the game I loved so much.

This time, I started to think back to my playing days, trying to decipher why I wasn’t able to perform at the level I felt I was capable of.

Of course I was no Virat Kohli, but I still felt like I could’ve done much better than what I actually ended up doing. 

Upon lots on introspection, I could only see one clear cut reason why that happened. 

Why I wasn’t able to ever play upto my full potential. 

It is the reason why even in business, I ended up doing things I shouldn’t have done, and made some very obvious mistakes over the years. 

It is also why a lot of you have not, and will not ever do the things you’re truly capable of. 

I’m not writing this to be vulnerable. I’m writing it because I know the mistakes that have handicapped my progress, and I hope you can take something from this and not make them too. 

Because we are always wiser in hindsight. 

The Big F:

Now this may sound cliched. But the thing that acted as the biggest blocker to my performance, was Fear. 

Upon very close inquiry, I realised that I always played under fear. I was afraid of getting out, I was afraid of being perceived as a weak player by my fellows, I was afraid of getting hit, I was afraid of underperforming. 

At all times. That’s why I continued to underperform.

Fear is like putting invisible bars around you. It shackles us and we can’t even see it. It keeps you on the defence all the time, you keep trying to avoid bad things, instead of going after the good things. 

For example, when I went out to bat, I realised because of my fear of getting out, I always batted to avoid getting out. Not to score runs. That was my mindset. And the fear was so deeply set, that it ruled me and I couldn’t even see it. 

And here’s the worst part. Once you adopt a fearful mindset, it persists in all areas of your life. It governs all your thoughts, decisions, actions, everything.

I noticed the same thing happening with my business life. 

Over the last year and a half, there were a lot of things that I wanted to do, that I wanted to experiment with, that I did not end up doing. 

I asked myself why did I not try and do them? And the answer was fear. 

It isn’t always fear in the conventional sense. But there were some things where I thought, “What if I invest ‘x’ amount of time in it, and then it doesn’t work? I would’ve lost all this time that I could spend on building something more certain”. 

This isn’t the conventional fear of failure. But it was the fear of losing time. 

I realised that I had all of these micro-fears in different areas of my life, that were preventing me from operating at peak potential, that I had to eliminate.

I often think about how the greatest minds in the world operate. Do you think they ever let fear influence their actions, decision making, etc? I don’t think so. They operate with ungodly amounts of self belief and courage. Because if you let fear rule, you cannot even dream, let alone execute,  things like colonising Mars. 

A lot of you in your lives and decisions, are governed by fear of all shapes and sizes. 

• Fear of failure 

• Fear of being judged being perceived a certain way 

• Fear of missing out 

• Fear of being left behind 

• Fear of not living up to someone’s expectations. 

…and more.

And all these fears end up shaping your lives and performance. You are all capable of a lot more than you think. If only you could do things without being afraid. Because fear tricks you into thinking limited, into thinking that you can’t do the things which you’re actually capable of.

The only way out, is to be brutally honest with yourself. Call your fears out. And then learn to address them. 

One thing that I can absolutely guarantee is if you don’t work on eliminating your fears, it will always keep you from reaching your peak potential. 

I don’t know about you, but that’s a scary though to entertain for me. To have all this, unused potential, go to waste, knowing I could’ve done a lot more. 

So the question that beckons now is, once you’ve identified your fears, called them out, how do you eliminate them?

The elimination of fear:

The root of fear is expectation and desire. When you desire and expect certain results, then along with it comes the fear of not getting the desired results. 

And the fear is exactly what prevents you from getting the desired result. 

This is a little bit of a paradox. 

I found one of the most beautiful explanations of this paradox and how you can deal with it in the Bhagwad Gita.

Arjuna asks Krishna how he can deal with the fear of defeat, the fear of failure. 

Krishna replies that even if Arjuna wants to win at all costs, victory still may not be his. He could still lose.

And the way to deal with that, is to not put victory on a pedestal. For if he is not overjoyed by the victory, then consequently, he will not fear the lack of it. 

He goes onto say that Arjuna should not fight the battle to achieve Victory, or avoid defeat. Instead, he should fight the battle because it is his duty to do so. 

This has probably been the single most helpful thing I’ve read about dealing with fear. If we can learn how to not put Victory on a pedestal, defeat suddenly appears bearable. 

It puts things into perspective. It shows you, that maybe the thing that you are fearing, isn’t so bad. 

And most importantly, it shows us what the driver behind our actions need to be. So often, all of us are caught up in trying to become successful, trying to win, trying to get stuff, trying to show others we are doing good. 

But the purpose of it all is not to win. It is to perform your duties. To fight the battle. Without being obsessed with victory, and without fearing defeat. 

To make sure that we can rest at the end of the day and say, “I did my absolute best”.

Until next time,

— Khyatt