I’m what some people may call competitive. (There are several of my coworkers giggling right now at this understatement.) I’m also a perfectionist. These personality traits have their pros and cons. Together, on a good day, they can help me rule the world! But today, I want to talk about one of the cons: fear of failure.

I hate to lose. It’s not that I’m a sore loser, I truly try not to be. I am normally super encouraging to others, and very congratulatory when others win. When I say I hate to lose, I mean internally. My competitive, perfectionist mind equates losing with failure. And failure is the worst.

The biggest downside to this fear of failure is that it makes me not want to try new things. Because I might not be good at them. And that would be a tragedy (cue eye roll.) Hell, no one is good at something the first time. I’m a fairly logical person. I know this. Regardless of logic, I don’t want to be bad at something, even if being bad at something new leads me to be awesome at something eventually.

This past weekend, this came into play. It’s the start of hay season in Arkansas. I love hay season – that means grass is growing, fields are green, my cows and goats are fat and sassy. A brief rundown on how the hay process works: we cut hay, let it lay for a few days to dry, once it is dry we rake it into windrows, and bale it. And let me just tell you, I’m a champ at raking hay. I can rake some of the straightest windrows you’ve ever seen (see that competitive perfection coming into play here?). But this year, I’ve had to venture out of my raking comfort zone.

See, Colton and I both work full time jobs in addition running the farm. This means the farm work gets done around our other schedules. Well, here’s the thing about hay season: when it’s time to be cut, that grass doesn’t care what your work schedule looks like. With Colton’s new job this year, the time the hay is ready to cut also happens to be when he’s needed the most. So that means in order for us to get our hay done, I’m having to learn to cut, rake, AND bale. I’ve cut before, it’s not too complicated, so I wasn’t concerned about that. My concerned was on the baling.

There’s more going on when you run the hay baler. It requires me to focus and pay attention, which are not my strong suits. So I didn’t want to learn. I like when Colton does the baling. He does awesome; he compliments me on how great of a raker I am; everyone’s happy. But $h!ts got to get done, so Colton showed me how to run the hay baler. I did fine. Really. It wasn’t a big deal, and wasn’t near as hard as I was thinking. I’m a little on the dramatic side, we all know this.

I was scared of failing at something just because I had never done it before. I was worried if I don’t do a great job, people will be able to tell when they see our hay. They can tell I don’t know what I’m doing. They can tell I suck. But here’s the thing: they don’t care. No one else cares what my hay bales look like. The only ones even remotely concerned with my hay bales are the animals, and trust me, they are much more concerned with taste than looks.

Do you have a fear of failure? How have you overcame the struggle?