When fear of failure ran my life

Fear of failure didn't announce itself as fear.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

It called itself discipline. Ambition. "Wanting it badly enough.It looked responsible from the outside. I was the person who stayed late, double-checked everything, said yes before I had time to think. What I didn't understand then was that I wasn't chasing success—I was running from the humiliation of falling short.

Failure, to me, was never abstract. It had a face. It sounded like people saying, I knew it. It felt like being exposed as someone who had overreached. I didn't fear mistakes as much as I feared the moment afterward, when the room goes quiet and everyone decides who you really are. Fear taught me that one misstep could cancel out years of effort. That belief changed how I moved through my life.