[PartiallyTyped]

You are not trying to avoid failure, you are giving yourself a cushion to avoid confronting the fact that you may not be as good as you think that you are.

The cushion is that you didn't apply yourself to the maximum because you procrastinated and ergo it isn't you who failed, but a you who did not apply themselves.

Why do we do it? Out of self preservation. Confronting the fact that the reality does not match our idealized self is a very difficult process as it leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We feel that our lack of skills will be exposed and everyone will see that we are failures.

In reality, there is only one self, you that is choosing not to do what you have to because you are trying to protect a fragile ego.

I don't mean to sound harsh, all humans do it in one way or the other.

But eventually reality catches up to us and forces us to confront our situation. In the expectation you will do as you always did. However, if you condition the future on taking failure as an indicator for growth rather than an indicator of danger, you will be able to overcome the situation.

Take what you fear the most and tame it by actively trying, and instead of thinking you will fail, think and accept that it is an indicator of all the new things you will learn.

NB: Speaking from experience.

PS. Radical acceptance is a powerful tool in getting out of these situations.

[matwood]

> You are not trying to avoid failure, you are giving yourself a cushion to avoid confronting the fact that you may not be as good as you think that you are. ... >In reality, there is only one self, you that is choosing not to do what you have to because you are trying to protect a fragile ego.

This is something that when I was growing up, we learned to deal with through sports. Sports teach kids to confront winning and losing early on and how to better handle their egos.

I wonder if these issues are becoming more common as sports participation has dropped?

[PartiallyTyped]

With the prevalence of player-vs-player (PvP) games with global leaderboards I'd argue that it could be the opposite, i.e. kids have a better grasp of where they stack on the larger scheme of things.

I too played sports competitively as a child and that eventually fueled interest in PvP games. It was about proving one's self.

In contrast, when one is limited to just academia/school, they have a poor understanding of where they stack up as they are essentially in a microcosm of reality. I take it that OP is in advanced studies and did well in their prior years. With high probability they did too well in school for their own good and didn't have to learn how to be consistent and do the work.

Again speaking from experience on the latter.

[matwood]

PvP games are a good point, though I do think there is something different than IRL sports. Even PvP game competitions in person I think have a different level of lesson than online.

Interesting thought about global leaderboards. I wonder if they are so big, that it's easy to dismiss though. I feel like there is an optimal size in between, sort of like what's happened in sports in the past. As a kid got better, they would get moved to higher levels.

[PartiallyTyped]

I can tell you from experience that it is very, very embarrassing to be low ranked when your friends are not ranked.

A friend of mine was top 100 in a region with 10 million players, and I could barely get to top 10% without help. Granted my friend is absolutely brilliant and has played competitively in all the games he played (e.g. WoW, League of legends, hearthstone, and so on). I wish he could find something in real life that gave him the same rush as "being one of the best".

[danr4]

This resonates with me. Tips on how to apply this?

[PartiallyTyped]

Radical honesty, radical acceptance, and introspection.

The idea of radical honesty is to avoid all forms of "dishonesty" which also includes omission. If you are feeling or experiencing something, you have to accept it and articulate it even that entails becoming vulnerable and losing some of the metaphorical shield that protects you.

In the example above: radical honesty is admitting that we are trying to protect our ego from being punctured by avoiding what is making us uncomfortable.

Radical acceptance calls for the acceptance of the current circumstances, i.e. expressing it is what it is, and trying to make the best of the situation. I can't change the fact that I am not as intelligent as Terrence Tao or Erik Demaine even though our childhoods up to a point were identical. The past can't change because the future wants it, so might as well try to create a future that doesn't want to change the past.

In the example above, radical acceptance for me was accepting that I can't just sit in the class and absorb the material as I did in undergrad, but instead I had to actively work for it to get the same grades.