Everybody has fears. Fear is human nature, fear is a response in the fibre of our being deigned to defend us against genuine danger. Some of us have more fears than other – it doesn’t necessarily make us safer or more cowardly, it’s just who we are. I am definitely one of these person with a lot of fears. More specifically, a lot of totally irrational fears.

You could be easily forgiven for thinking my biggest fear is spiders. Those creepy little arachnids strike icy cold chills to my very core, but they are actually not my biggest fear.

I believe that my biggest fear is failure.

I think it could be argued that pretty much everyone is afraid of failure, but I also think that a lot of people don’t realise how frightening failure can be. I don’t really know why I’m so afraid of failure – after all, we all fail at things all the time and life goes on without any real impact. The fear of failure, however, can become almost crippling if you let it get inside your head.

Failure isn’t just about tests and exams. It’s much more than that, it’s also about things like being a good person, being a good friend and being a responsible citizen.

I definitely find myself in an unwanted situation where this particular fear dictates to some extent how I live my life. I plan things to minimise the risk of encountering failure during my day.

Quite frankly the fear of failure is exhausting. There is nothing you can do to avoid failure. We are all failures, after all. Yet you are constantly running, constantly hiding. Constantly living in fear. That’s no way to live a life, yet that’s exactly how so many of us are living our lives.

The main culprit? Other people’s expectations. The truth is that we should only allow ourselves to be judged by ourselves but often even when we judge ourselves we use the criteria set by other people.

Would you ever compare a goldfish to an elephant? Unlikely.