some fears were made to be challenged

Here is an embarrassing fact: I am scared of everything. Well, almost everything. Let’s just say that the list of things that make me tense up with anxiety include the dark, the beach, crowds, going to new places, spiders, elevators, airplanes, public speaking, and confined spaces; to name a few. And those are only the ones that really get my chest to tighten and my breath to quicken.

But the big one that I used to be scared of, the thing that I was most terrified of, was being alone. Not in an ‘everyone is going to die’ kind of way, though I’m scared of that too, but in a ‘please don’t make me go to the shops by myself’ kind of way. I was the kind of teenager who couldn’t even walk thirty metres to the bubblers by themselves which, understandably, drove my friends crazy.

And for a long time these fears controlled my life. I hated the way anxiety made me feel, and so I started to avoid any situations that would make me feel that way. But over the last couple of years I have made it a point to challenge myself as much as possible. If I feel a thrill of fear go down my back when I think of something that I really want to do? I’m going to go out there and do it anyway.

People say that if you keep doing things that you are scared of then they get a lot easier. Well guess what, they’re right. Sometimes it does not get easier the second time or even the twentieth time that you do something, but eventually it will. I can guarantee that. I have moments when I almost give up and crawl back into my safe little shell, but then I think back to who I was four years ago, that fear that I felt on a daily basis, and I realise just how far I have come.

The girl who was afraid of walking to the bubblers by herself is about to embark on a solo trip around Europe. Am I scared? You bet. More than anything. But I know now that being scared of something is not a good enough excuse not to do it. In fact, the fear can often be helpful. Being scared of public speaking means that now I prepare for weeks and write my entire speech out to keep in front of me at all times, rather than trying to battle it solo and freezing up in front of everyone. It means that I am going to virtually walk through my Europe trip on google maps ten hundred times so that I know where I’m going, but it doesn’t mean I will let it stop me. I will simply turn that fear into something useful.

Letting fear hold you back from things that you really want to do is not healthy. Because if you give in once, it will only get stronger each subsequent time. Challenging yourself, even if it has to be on a daily basis, means that you are living the life that you want to lead, not a life you don’t want simply because you’re too scared to go after the one that you do.

(Image Credit: 1.)