Life can feel too ordinary when it’s free of challenge. Without a sense of stretch or risk, things lose colour. Fear adds its own texture, sometimes making life dull, other times overwhelming. It can feel immobilising. For me, fear has often shown up as a subtle pattern: fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of making a mistake. And too often, I’ve let those fears push me into playing it safe. Stuck, instead of growing.

Thankfully, I’ve retired from the role of Chairman of the Bored.

Challenge, when embraced, is good medicine. It’s how we evolve. Each one carries the possibility of learning, trying, erring, adjusting, and ultimately expanding. Mistakes are part of that process. Without them, learning stalls. Without learning, nothing new gets added to life. Change becomes impossible. And without change, meaning tends to slip away.

If I ever feel that life lacks purpose, I can often trace it back to the avoidance of challenge—to the fear that kept me small. These fears may have roots in childhood, reinforced over time, but they’re mine now. They impact my thinking, my mood, and even the way stress shows up in my body. And as an adult, I hold the responsibility to do something about them.

To move forward, my desire to learn has to outweigh my fear of failing. If I refuse to make mistakes, I’ll cling to the status quo, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Growth will stagnate. The irony is: I want to learn, but I fear mistakes. I want to win, but I fear losing. My logic knows mistakes are part of mastering anything, but emotionally, I’ve wrestled with resistance.

So I ask myself: Can I accept that mistakes are part of becoming? Can I be okay with the discomfort they bring if it means gaining something meaningful? Can my hunger for growth be greater than my aversion to discomfort?

For years, my fear of losing outran my desire to win. But I’m learning. Slowly. Surely. The more I choose growth, the more I give winning a chance to catch up.