Some people say that “the person who gets second place is the first loser.“ While it is important to always do your best, and to encourage others to do so, how harmful can this mindset be? For years my goal has been to get accepted into college and to have scholarships pay for it all. In doing this, I valued excellence above all. I wanted to be the best at anything and everything I did because in my eyes, it was required in order to stay on the correct path towards my goal. On this journey, I told myself I was guided by determination; this is mostly true. While my value for excellence was in fact fueled by determination, there is another layer. My determination was fueled by fear, particularly the fear of failing. Valuing excellence and fearing failure go hand-in-hand.

My younger sister and I were taken away from my parents when I was seven. I didn’t know what was going on then. If at the time you asked me what I thought was happening, I am not sure what my answer would’ve been or if I even had one. I would later find out that it was due to neglect. The realization hurt because I felt like we should have been our parent’s biggest priority. I was confused why they didn’t love us enough to want to do better. We were adopted by our grandparents. They were able to give us better resources to be successful and they stressed the importance of academics. I wanted to be better than my parents were. I wanted to break the cycle and make sure I had a successful future. I was scared of ending like them, and I think my grandparents were too. I always felt like they thought no matter what they did, turning out like my parents was just in my DNA. I wanted them to know that taking us in wouldn’t turn out to be pointless.

I want to say I worked hard, but for most of school I didn’t; school came easy. In elementary I was put in my school’s gifted and talented program. As a child, to me this meant I was special. That I had something the other kid’s didn’t have. Looking back, it just meant I caught on to multiplying a little faster than normal. In any case, this combined with good grades granted me the title “the smart kid”. I wore it like a badge. I would set the curve, get nominated by teachers for awards, receive medals. I was proud of being the smartest and the highest achiever in my class. It was also expected of me. Or it felt like it anyway. I definitely expected it of myself.

Recently I have learned about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset is the belief that you can achieve or learn anything given that you practice and work at it. It is the healthy habit to have since with the growth mindset you aren’t afraid of failures, but rather you embrace them since they are just a measure of how far and what you should do to reach your goal. The fixed mindset however is the belief that intelligence and talent are fixed and, in a sense, there is a cap on them. You fear trying new things because you may not be good at it. You may feel threatened by another’s success because you feel pressure to do better in your own endeavors. Valuing excellence, and labeling young children as “gifted,” instills a fixed mindset.

I got into high school and had already completed Algebra I, did well in Geometry, and then finally faced my first academic struggle: Algebra II. I couldn’t understand why it felt like I wasn’t able to learn this material. But it wasn’t just my classes. I was on the speech team and at one tournament after making it all the way to finals, I didn’t even end up placing in the top three. Every action has an equal opposite reaction. When you define yourself by your success, you also define yourself by your failures.

Over the years, I had developed a fixed mindset. Being great at everything means being scared and frustrated with anything you’re not immediately good at. You avoid those things because it doesn’t fit who you have carved yourself out to be. When you do fail, you feel like a disappointment and start to think maybe you’re not as great as everyone thinks you are or maybe you’ve just been lucky this whole time. This created the perfect storm for High Functioning Depression. You work hard to maintain the “perfect appearance” and to stay the “high achiever” when really you’re miserable. You can’t let people down, you can’t be a disappointment. You have to keep being amazing and keep climbing even when you don’t have any physical, mental, or emotional energy left. It’s what people are expecting and you can’t lose your crown. You learn to follow the strict rules of the “perfect you” that you have created in your head so that no one knows you’re slipping. Maintaining the illusion is arguably my biggest achievement yet.

Striving to be the best when you are not your best self takes a lot out of you. Especially when you reach a point where accomplishments you should be celebrating just feel like the bare minimum. When you set the bar at the ceiling, you can never applaud yourself. With High Functioning Depression I got things done and had a work ethic like no other, but it was because I felt like if I didn’t completely overexert myself then the world would cave in. Also staying busy helped keep my mind off of myself and everything that I felt was wrong. My senior year of high school I filled out endless scholarships and college applications forms to the point that I actually did end up getting my school paid for. I reached the goal I had worked so hard for over so many years. But the hopelessness I felt and the thought of never being able to feel success -or any emotion- put me in therapy and on antidepressants. I was successful. I achieved excellence, my greatest value, but at what cost?

My little sister means the world to me. I want her to be successful, but I don’t want her to go down the same path I did. I fear she is. My sister is no doubt intelligent. She has always been top of her class. Like me, she got put in gifted in talented at a young age because she was able to pick up on new material quickly. However, as she’s gotten older she has not been able to learn at the rapid rate she originally could. But because she is my younger sister, and I excelled in school, she has big shoes to fill. My family wants her to be successful. They value excellence. But in valuing excellence, they have applied it to all aspects of her life. She has been scolded for everything between getting a B on a paper, to not making pancakes to the best of her ability. They want her to have the drive I had, to want to be the best at everything. Instead, she has developed a fear of trying new things because she may not immediately be good at them. She has a fixed mindset and understandably so. I haven’t been able to share my experience with my family because unfortunately, mental illness doesn’t fit excellence. I can’t explain why their mostly good intentions are backfiring and instead pushing my sister away from any potential passions or interests. I try to be there for her by encouraging her to try new things and helping her to enjoy the learning process.

Retraining your brain to detach failure from your identity is proving to be a rather hard thing to do. I have cried over a failed calculus quiz but I am trying to keep in mind that it won’t really matter a year from now. I am trying to prepare myself for the possibility that I may not have a 4.0 GPA, and to learn that that is okay. Growth mindset encourages failure. To learn to love to fail, and to use it as a measure of progress and how to see how and where you can improve. Failure should be a reflection of your process, and not a reflection of your abilities. Likewise, a number or letter on a grade school report card should not be a reflection of intelligence but rather, what could be improved in effectively learning. With that being said, I am not mentally to the point where I can confidentially say “I value failing.” Failing still scares me. Being okay with failing scares me. But I am working to overcome it. For now, I will say I want to value learning and growing, and maybe with that growth I will finally value failure.