Missing the Summit but Conquering My Fear of Failure

Mountaineering, my passion for 20+ years, has taught me many life lessons – and my deepest lesson came from failing to summit a Colorado 14,000 foot peak in September 2019.

Although 14ers (as such peaks are called) are significantly lower than the 20,000+ foot peaks I’ve scaled in Nepal and South America, I was attempting to summit two of them – Mt. Shavano and Tabeguache Peak – on the same day. This was ambitious – to safely climb Colorado 14ers, one must start in the early morning to avoid the lightning storms that frequently occur there past noon. And to do both, I needed to begin by 6:45 AM.

Two days before my summit attempt, I carelessly sprained my ankle while training. Despite reducing my training, icing my ankle, and taking ibuprofen, it still hurt and I was worried. But regardless, I was determined to stick to my plans, so I woke up early for summit day.

However, I began inexplicably dawdling before setting off. When it was time to drive to the trail, I instead reread my map and trail guides, and massaged my ankle in vain. I saw my climbing time slipping away, but I felt powerless to stop delaying, and I didn’t know why.

Finally, the reason hit me – I was frustrated with myself for carelessly spraining my ankle while training, and was scared it would stop me from summiting the two peaks. I particularly dislike failing when it stems from my own mistakes, and fear that if my injury forced me to turn around early, I’d blame my prior carelessness for it and be doubly frustrated with myself. So my mind wanted to protect me from trying and failing by having me delay so long that I no longer had any time left to actually try!  This is a counterproductive mind trick known in psychology as “self-handicapping”.

Once I realized how my anxiety was sabotaging me, I took a few moments to use self-compassion: I’d give it an honest try and turn around if the ankle pain grew too intense. I reassured myself that it was fine if I failed to summit either peak. And as soon as I faced my fear of failure with self-compassion, I was able to stop self-handicapping and drive to the trailhead –  unfortunately arriving an hour later than planned. While my sprained ankle somewhat slowed my hiking pace, the pain was manageable and I was able to summit the first peak, Shavano, around noon. But from Shavano’s summit, I saw the usual midday dark clouds start to roll in. While I was physically able to continue, the lightning risk was now too great to safely proceed. And so I sadly waved at the second peak, Tabeguache, and returned to my car.

Summiting Shavano was no small accomplishment, yet I knew I could’ve also done Tabeguache if I hadn’t been sidetracked by my fear of failure.  But I had learned a lesson, as I now noticed my tendencies to self-handicap in other aspects of life.  For example, I exercise on most mornings before work. After that trip, I saw that on some mornings when I felt unexpectedly tired, I might procrastinate by dawdling over breakfast, managing emails, or washing dishes so I wouldn’t have time to exercise. While I would’ve been better served by proceeding with an easier workout, rather than entirely avoiding exercise, this would’ve required me to face the unpleasant reality that I wasn’t as fit as I’d hoped. By avoiding the workout through procrastination, I was able to skirt that fact.

Now that I’m aware of this self-handicapping tendency, I’m more likely to avoid procrastination, and confront myself when it occurs. While this tendency to avoid failing by preventing myself from trying hasn’t totally left me, it’s now pretty rare.

Instead of self-handicapping to avoid facing my fears of failure, I note that one usually has to “suck at something before getting good”. I reassure myself that there’s no reason to feel shame over trying and failing, because our successes or failures do not determine our self-worth. Finally, I remind myself that I grow more from making even modest progress on one major task rather than on perfectly completing many minor ones. Armed with this awareness, I now regularly take on new challenges that enable me to steadily grow both professionally and personally. I still sometimes try and fail, but more often I try and succeed.  And failures often lead to growth –  my increased tendency to face reality came from my failure on Shavano – so I’m grateful that even that failure yielded long-term success. Can you think of any areas in your own life where you self-handicap to avoid failing?

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