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Everybody is motivated by something different. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to assume that fear is a great, common motivator. At times throughout the course of history, it has been. It is probably overrated, though, as a primary source of intestinal fortitude. For many, fear is the antithesis of motivation, draining individuals who might otherwise achieve amazing things and diverting their attention away from the true object of their desire. What we think about, we bring about. The Law of Attraction states that if we concern ourselves with that which makes us afraid, then rather than catapult us in the direction opposite of our fears toward reaching our goals, it actually causes the object of our fears to be drawn closer. Awake and think about losing your job because of the competition nipping at your heels, for instance, and what for some inspires a hungry attitude for others will be the force that leads them to famine. “Keep your eye on the ball” is an adage that teaches us to stay focused on what we hope to accomplish. If we take our eye off the ball, then we may miss it. Fear of failure is perhaps the most dangerous origin of anxiety. It is a rare breed of individual who is mentally equipped to handle it once it sets in. After we become rooted in fear, we can work to suppress it, but the smallest trigger can often bring it back to the surface, rearing its ugly head like a sea monster with massive tentacles pulling you into the abyss. The cerebrally strong can look it at for what it is and not just look the other way, which is disingenuous; they can meet it head-on and fight through it with the determination that their core purpose is greater than the fear, which is genuine conquering. Pro wrestling, as an industry, has been a historical harbinger for fear and insecurity as much as it has stimulated inspiration. Accentuating its sporting elements, it promotes the mindset of staying in the ring (and on the road) so as not to allow your spot to become available or your upward mobility to be stunted, often at the risk of your physical well-being. Within its confines, you have to watch what you say and do to almost ridiculous degrees or be shunned as a troublemaker, often without actually having done much of anything wrong. At its best, pro wrestling is a business that attracts dream chasers. At its worst, pro wrestling is a cesspool for achievers and believers to be chewed up and spit out in a systematic grind. I look at the September 2015 career position of Dolph Ziggler – my favorite wrestler of the current era whose success I most resonate with whenever it occurs – and I wonder whether or not fear has taken a strong foothold in his life as a WWE Superstar. I look at him and I see complacency. It's not just the nature of the Rusev feud that he's currently embroiled in either. Sure, that angle is of the variety that sours a fans attitude toward pro wrestling. It's heatless and unattached, lacking in chemistry and wrought with the disadvantages that often supersede the advantages of having soap opera writers script wrestling television shows. Unfortunately, complacency (or is it resignation?) has been plaguing Ziggler for two years. Ever since he got kicked in the head and had the World Heavyweight Championship taken off of his waist – perhaps the greatest instance of potential fear-inducing circumstance in his entire career – he has meandered about the WWE hierarchy like a rebel without a consistent cause. The fascinating thing about WWE, in particular, is that it may feature people portraying fictional characters, but the people behind the characters are categorically placed in levels of importance to WWE’s vision by their spot on the shows on which they perform. As fans and critics, we can learn a lot about a wrestler’s standing based on the prominence of their placement on Raw and/or PPV. Dolph Ziggler was a World Championship challenger on WWE’s third most important event (the Royal Rumble) two years in a row before winning Money in the Bank and cashing in on WWE’s biggest non-PPV night of the year (the post-WrestleMania Raw). From early 2011 to mid-2013, then, Ziggler was a bonafide star on the rise. His standing noticeably shifted after he was concussed in April 2013. He dropped the title and free fell for a year, going from extremely relevant to virtually irrelevant. He regained a fraction of that stature by re-emerging as an upper mid-card babyface, but the damage was done and it could be irreparable. What does that do to a man like Nick Nemeth, whose portrayal of Dolph Ziggler has weakened considerably since the man got concussed but the character got consequently depushed? When Edge was last World Champion and Ziggler was a rising star on the cusp of the main-event, you could sense a burning desire emanating from The Showoff's matches; he wanted Edge's spot or at least to share in his spotlight. He improved by leaps and bounds back then. When he would speak, his words carried the weight of meaning. When he would wrestle, he would evoke comparisons to Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels. It seemed as if he might follow their career paths, if not a multi-time WrestleMania headliner and WWE Champion like Michaels then surely the example of what Curt Hennig's career might have looked like had it been transplanted from the late 80s and early 90s to the late 2000s and our current decade. He'd dealt with adversity before Jack Swagger's concussion-inducing kick, but nothing to that extent. The mere idea that a man whose first two television gimmicks in WWE were a golf caddy and a male cheerleader could be in the discussion for the top stars of the future is almost laughable in hindsight. He also had to overcome the name Dolph Ziggler, which had the potential to end up the latest addition to the sports entertainment graveyard for poorly named wrestlers (see Kenny “Don't call me Lenny” Dykstra). Yet, overcome those obstacles he surely did. It was how hard he was working and how good he was becoming that earned him the spot atop my favorite wrestler list once Edge hung up his boots on the heels of HBK's retirement. I developed the same kind of emotional investment in Ziggler that many fans brought with them from the indies to WWE for CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose (hence my exploration of his psyche). Emotionally, we each have a reservoir for how much we can take before our capacity to handle fear consumes us and we have to fight from the depths to detoxify ourselves and get back to an even keel. Ideally, we can be consciously aware enough to mentally detox when our reservoir is 25% full instead of reaching critical mass. As early as the “Shhhh” from our parents when we cry as kids, our society implores us to ignore our feelings. The conscious and the subconscious, though, are not completely separate entities; they are parts of the same universal whole. To shun the conscious thought in an effort to subdue subconscious traits (like fear) is a flawed concept. We need to be able to decipher between instinctual fear and the pattern, training, and behavior of being fearful. The former is a biologic response to danger, like Peter Parker's spider sense for lack of a better analogy. If you see a bear, our internal process kicks in to assess the situation and determine a course of action – the classic fight or flight response. The latter, however, is learned fear. We are taught how to fear having too little money or material possessions. We don't all of a sudden make a subconscious choice to be afraid of losing our job or even getting a job or what will happen if we don't go to college or, more commonly across the spectrum, fear failure. Some people refer to fear of failure as a cancer. Yet, cancer is an internal abnormality. Abnormal cell growth is stimulated by ingestion or inhalation from outside sources, but is inherently a new cell production problem. So, fear of failure is more like a communicable disease such as the Bubonic Plague – a bacteria that attacks people with weak immune systems. Has Dolph Ziggler contracted a career-threatening case? Understanding our conscious mind fundamentally improves our ability to ward off fear mongers, be they people in our lives that veer toward negativity or the media which bombards us with the wrongs instead of the rights in the world. If we push our feelings away, how can we understand ourselves? Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it; our response to what happens to us dictated by our level of self-actualization. If you can comprehend what drives fear in your mind, you can separate the instinctual from the learned behavior. My parents, for instance, taught me an inclination that I've since tried to annihilate from my existence because of its fear-breeding tendencies. They constantly identify the worst case scenario in any given situation. “You're opening your own private health clinic? What happens if you fail? What's the back-up plan?” I had no back-up plan. There was no other option but success. To create a back-up plan was to program part of my brain to expect failure. That pretty well exemplifies what my childhood was like, in fact. You can probably relate in some area of your life to the “if you don't do X, then beware of Y” philosophy. That works for some, but not for me. The more I allow fear into my world, the more it spreads – like an aggressive infection – to all parts of my life. Has the career backslide since his concussion doomed Ziggler to a wrestling life full of unfilled promise? Has the daily grind of the pro wrestling business worn down his conscious awareness, stripping him of his ability to cognitively process his situation? The likes of Rollins, Ambrose, and others have blown right by him in the pecking order of the stars on deck to supplant Cena's generation. He seems defeated, content to accept whatever WWE graciously affords a talent who higher-ups “don't see money in” rather than get back the killer instinct necessary to prove his office naysayers wrong. I listen to him in out-of-character interviews and, when coupled with his in-character displays, it seems almost as if Ziggler is happy to be in 9th place (to borrow from the WWE 2014/2015 rankings on my podcast two weeks ago). I used to say “I know that Ziggler is showing just a fraction of what he's capable.” I'm not sure I believe that anymore; and I want to be proven wrong in saying so. Once delivering on such a consistent basis that creative decided to give him a half-show reign as World Heavyweight Champion as if to serve notice to the fans that “this guy is going places,” Ziggler now bumps as he is supposed to bump, talks about wrestling larceny but never steals the show, and misses opportunities left and right. The Raw after last year's Survivor Series was case-in-point. After arguably the greatest win of his career beyond his Money in the Bank cash-in the night after WrestleMania 29, Ziggler was given the chance to cut the promo of his babyface run (which, let's face it, has offered us zero memorable interviews). He whiffed, failing to mention how much winning meant given that the Authority was no longer in storyline power and instead choking out a line about how he went out and stole the show like he always did – the kind of thing you'd expect of a mid-carder for life. Four years ago, I sat down and put my vision of Ziggler's career into column form. I developed a fictional accolade for him to become the first WWE Superstar to win and wrote about it in a newspaper story-format as if it had already happened. As he became the wrestler whose success I most wanted to see, I dreamed big for him. Back then, I figured the eventual 2013 Money in the Bank cash-in to be a memory that I'd rank up there with Edge's New Year's Revolution cash-in or HBK fulfilling the boyhood dream. Now? It's hard not to see Ziggler being placed in the same class of former World Champion as fellow failed main-event experiment Jack Swagger. And I genuinely question whether or not he can ever regain his footing. Is the best we as Ziggler fans can expect for the future a token win at Survivor Series? Is his ceiling Rick Martel instead of Curt Henning? Fear is an enemy of progress. Failure teaches us lessons that we can apply to our future. Fear of failure may well be limiting Dolph Ziggler’s future. He made it to the top and got the rug pulled out from under him. For the last two years, he's done nothing but seemingly hold back. Is he still here to the show world something? If so, what is he here to show us? His catchphrase is right; it’s too bad where he is right now on the card and that he’s acting OK with it because he is too good for that spot. Move beyond the fear, DZ. Turn the Show back on.
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