When failure feels safer than success

When failure feels safer than success

This morning, on my way to my day job, something small shifted.

Nothing cinematic.
No revelation worthy of a before-and-after.

Just a thought that arrived quietly, carried by the road unspooling ahead of me, by a song I’ve heard too many times without really listening to it, by the rare luxury of not being in a hurry.

The thought was this:

Failure feels safer to me than success.

I don’t fully trust that thought yet.
But it stayed with me.

Why failure can be comforting

Failure is a known landscape.

If a project falters, if momentum slips, if something I hoped for refuses to become what I imagined, I already know the shape of the aftermath.

I return to routine.
To the scaffolding of days I have practiced for years.
To familiar obligations, familiar limits, familiar ground.

There are no sudden decisions waiting there.
No new version of myself demanding to be inhabited.
No unfamiliar altitude where the air might feel thinner.

Failure does not ask me to change.
It asks only that I continue.

Why success can feel heavier

Success behaves differently.

It rearranges things.

It opens doors that do not close behind you.
It brings questions that refuse to stay theoretical:

• What now?
• What do I commit to?
• What do I risk losing if I keep going?
• Who am I required to become if this works?

Success shifts the ground while you are standing on it.

Even when it arrives as an answer to something you asked for.

And that instability, however hopeful, can feel like weight.

The quiet relief of “I can always go back”

What eased the tension this morning was a simple realization.

The worst realistic outcome is not collapse.
It is return.

Returning to a life I already know how to live.
Returning to a version of myself that has proven survivable.

That thought loosened something.

It didn’t shrink ambition.
It redistributed it.
Made it lighter.
Made it portable.

Trying stopped feeling reckless.
It began to feel reversible.

And yet, I’m not sure that safety actually helps me move faster.
It might just help me move at all.

Giving yourself permission to try

We often speak of failure as the thing to avoid.
As the cliff edge that must not be approached.

But sometimes, it is the acceptance of failure that makes movement possible.

Not because we aim for it.
But because knowing we can endure it creates room to act.

Risk becomes tolerable when retreat remains allowed.

At least, that’s where I am today.

This may change.