Fear of Failing or Fear of Giving Something Up?

This subject was raised by a friend of mine, Gustavo Carriconde, and he had no idea how deep it really runs in my life. I told him I would write about it one day, but the topic stirred me more than he imagined. So I decided to bring this reflection to you.

Anyone who looks at my trajectory will see that I spent 21 years at the same company, always growing, taking on new challenges. But few know that, one day, I abandoned all that security to start from zero. I was young, I was 40. Today I am 44. It has not been that long.

What no one sees is that this was a choice with no way back. Beyond giving up a consolidated trajectory, I changed cities, from Fortaleza to Sao Paulo, in the middle of a pandemic. In other words, with no prospect in sight, in a hostile scenario. But I am not here to talk about victimhood, my history proves I never had reason for it.

Now, to the central point: when I made that decision, what weighed most on my mind? The fear of failing or giving up my security?

Fear is a strange force. It can paralyze you or warn you not to make mistakes. I was always a Formula 1 fan, and every great driver understands this. Senna used to say that the day he lost his fear would be the day to stop. Because fear kept him on the line.

So we already know the problem is not in fear itself, but in how we deal with it. The real question is: do you fear failing, or do you fear giving something up?

In the mentoring I do, I see that people do not freeze only from the fear of failing. What truly stops them from moving forward are the consequences of that failure. If you are over 40, you grew up in a time when mistakes had severe consequences. Wrote a word wrong? Redo the whole page. My nephew today has never been through that. The phone's autocorrect does the work for him. If he gets something wrong on his father's iPhone, he just reinstalls the system.

The real dilemma is in giving up. Every decision has a price. Many times, it means giving up a legacy, a position, money, your own ego. And that is the real cost of the decision we often do not want to face.

The price is not always too high. But it will always be proportional to the size of your choice. And that is where the fear of failing comes in: we can lose everything or, worse, lose what matters most to us. And not always, in fact most of the time, does that have anything to do with money.

To give up means letting go of stability, accepting that maybe you are not as capable as you imagined, losing credibility, comfort, security. And that is hard. That is why, often, avoiding a decision becomes a synonym for avoiding the sacrifice.

When we reach this point, fear returns to the scene. But now it has two paths: to paralyze you or to make you more attentive to the details. You can use it to be more strategic, more thorough, more prepared to make a conscious decision.

The question that remains is: will you accept security and give up your dream, or will you study and prepare as much as possible to reduce the chances of error?

Today, I live in Sao Paulo, with no connection to my old job. I am building my story. And you? What story will you want to tell?