Why We'd Rather Stay Stuck Than Risk Feeling Stupid

Sometimes, we’d rather compromise on the pace of our growth than risk hearing someone confirm our worst fear: I suck. My work sucks. I’m just not good enough and I never will be.

There’s a sneaky lil defense mechanism at play here.

Suppose that something you care about doesn’t land. Maybe your friends don’t like-share-comment on your YT videos. Maybe your girlfriend still snaps at you all the time despite the tremendous amount of efforts you’re putting into the relationship. Or maybe your job applications just aren’t turning into interviews and job offers. And you hit a fork in the road:

Option 1: Ask these people why it’s not working (coz your brain is now fried, trying to come up with an explanation that fits), and risk hearing something that stings, AND possibly change or improve what needs to be changed or improved to make it work

Option 2: Avoid asking for feedback, keep doing the same thing with little tweaks you yourself come up with, and protect yourself from hearing, “you’re not good enough” (which your inner voice keeps saying on loop anyway)

Honestly? Many of us choose the second path. Mostly because deep down, we’ve attached our worth to the outcome. If there’s failure, it’s not just that this thing didn’t work. It’s that I didn’t work. I failed. I’m a complete failure.

So we stop asking for help or feedback. We stop letting others in. We keep trying to make changes or improvements or tweaks in private. We keep hoping that one day, things will magically pick up and we’ll never have to hear that our fears were right.

Well, I wish I could tell you that this option works for all. But it doesn’t. Not for everyone, and certainly not all the time.

Growth rarely happens in silence and isolation.

Many a times, the feedback we fear turns out to be softer than we expected.

Many a times, the feedback helps us see that these people don’t think that we’re bad or unskilled or absolutely worthless.

Many a times, the feedback helps us pick up the pace and make valuable changes in our actions, which ultimately help us reach where we want to reach (possibly faster than we otherwise would have).

And even if we do hear something hard? We often learn that we CAN take it. We CAN survive it. We CAN deal with it.

But more often than not, we end up getting a clearer roadmap for ourselves when we reach out.

Speaking from experience. Try it.

You don’t have to figure everything out on your own, I swear.