Below Deck Mediterranean’s Alex Radcliffe Opens up About His Fear of Failure
Alex Radcliffe from Below Deck Mediterranean is showing his more vulnerable side in a recent Instagram video and previous discussions surrounding anxiety and his fear of failure.
Radcliffe posted a video on Instagram where he is talking with a friend about his fear of failure. He describes how he will set a goal, almost reach the goal but then back away. “I dropped out of school, I got into yachting,” he shared. “Like I want to do something, but then I say, once I’m here, OK I have this goal. I’m gonna do it. And once I finish that one piece of that goal I set, I’m like alright I’m kinda bored, what’s next. Or I get a little nervous I might fail.”
Alex Radcliffe from ‘Below Deck Med’ opens up about his fear of failure
“Rather than fully doing it and failing, I don’t try to start it because I have this much confidence in myself,” he continued. Radcliffe shared on Below Deck Mediterranean Season 5 that he struggled in school, while his twin sister excelled. Yachting gave him a foundation to succeed and he was eventually promoted to lead deckhand.
Despite the promotion and successes he’s experienced in yachting, Radcliffe admits he continues to second guess himself. “You have to fail so much before you succeed,” he said in the Instagram video. “I’ve got that and I’ve heard that my whole life. But I’ve always tried to be a perfectionist.”
Radcliffe said he strives to be the best at work and in his interpersonal relationships. “But when I see it’s going to go off the f**king cliff, I f**king jump, man,” he said. “And it’s like why? Like why are we so afraid of failure? Is it in ourselves? Is it letting people down? Or letting yourself down?”
He admitted he hates to let people down. “I tell people, oh, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna go on this diet or I’m gonna go get this job,” he said. “It’s like you set up your expectations up here and in reality you have to start here.”
Alex Radcliffe also discussed his fear of flying in an earlier video
In addition to opening up about his fear of failure, Radcliffe also recently shared a raw video of another one of his fears – his fear of flying. He was about to embark upon a flight to Florida when the flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. Radcliffe opted to return home rather than get on the plane after the issues were resolved.
“I was just saying I was at the airport and I was getting all these signs that I shouldn’t fly today,” he said an Instagram video. “Because I’m petrified of flying. That’s where the majority of my anxiety comes from because of the fear of death.” Adding, “So anything that puts me in the situation that I’m afraid to do, I get super scared,” he said. “I wanna find an excuse not to do something.”
A few fans suggested that Radcliffe could ease his anxiety with a cocktail. But he said masking the anxiety with substances wasn’t the answer. “So many of you guys are messaging me, telling me like oh take a Xanax, you know, go drink,” he continued. “No, I like being in control of my brain. I never took a Xanax, I don’t do any drugs. And me drinking is not gonna help me, I feel like it’s gonna make me more anxious. But I wanna say we all have our anxiety. We all have our fears.”
