That Thing Called "Anxiety"

A common thread I hear on steno blogs and forums and such is how FAILURE is a consistent thing while learning.
You cannot get into court reporting seriously unless you accept that you will fail many times before succeeding.

When I first read that, I'd think, "Pff, but of course! I'm no child. I can take some hard hits." While the defiant side would whisper, "That will never happen to me."

And yet it didn't take long for me to have to realize that there is a difference between understanding that concept, and truly embracing it.

My theory Lesson 3 and 4 tests went by swimmingly. No misses at all. 100% accuracy.
I could hear the crowds cheering!
The cockiness already got to my head and so I barreled through Lesson 5 just so that I could get to the test.
The TEST! I had handle that! Surely!

I ended up making up some pretty silly mistakes and garnered only 96% accuracy.
And I knew exactly why that happened.

Because I rushed. I even rushed to the point of not ensuring that I got 98%+ accuracy on one of the exercises! What was I thinking??!

Clearly, I was thinking too much about how freakin' invincible I am, and let success blow up my ego.

This seemingly small event made me look at how I was doing my lessons. Made me reconsider my perspective of what I wanted and what was right.
Wanting to finish up soon sounds great, but not at the expense of rushing through something without having a firm grasp of the basics.

A strong foundation is what I need to have, and I shouldn't consider myself to be on some sort of deadline in order to be done with it, and move on.

When I think about my current situation, I really am blessed to have the luxury of time on my side.
I have an adequate nest-egg saved up, and could go without work for a few several years without putting a serious strain on my finances.
I have no children or car or house insurance or student loans nipping away at that egg, so I should not think that I must complete the entire program in 2 years "or wind up on the streets."

This little scare with Lesson 5, which will look like piddly-dunk months from now, was a great wake-up call that I need to keep myself in check. With doing the online program, there is no one there to make sure that I am pacing myself--either too fast or too slow. So I need to really listen to my gut instinct about how solid I feel about a concept before moving on.

It's been a few days since that Lesson 5 test, and since then I've been doing a lot of thinking and inspiration-searching through steno blogs and forums. Thousands have gone through this, and am I just one more. My situation is no different or special than theirs, and if they were able to do it, then so will I.