When I do muster up the cajones to do it, it gives me a thrill. A comment such as, “you’re hilarious!” is easy enough, but telling someone honestly, “I’m drawn to your personality and I’d like to be friends with you” is, for me, a whole different ball game. I find that when I’m in public places, I see strangers in whom I admire certain qualities in: humor, grace, wit, physical attractiveness or the sound of their laugh. So what on earth am I talking about? Here’s an example. Additionally, if you’re having a particularly boring day, mastering something that scares you can be a highlight.
What I aim to do is conquer a small challenge and in doing so gain a fractional amount of self-confidence and satisfaction. In doing one thing every day that scares me, I am not looking to illicit terror, sweats, or a state of panic. The fewer self-imposed limits we have, the more you’ll feel like a superhero. It’s a means to thwart stagnation in your habits, to push your own limits of comfort and security. The purpose of this exercise is to transform small fears into tiny instances of increased control and empowerment. And maybe you’re not ready to break those habits, and maybe you never will be.īut if a small part of you wants to do all of those little things without thinking twice, give it a shot. It could be fear of failure or fear of success, fear of the unknown or the equally terrifying fear of the known. It’s easy to claim you simply don’t want to do such things, but I’d argue that behind your aversion is fear. Consider some of the things you avoid on a daily basis… parallel parking, phone calls, mental math, telling the stranger in the grocery store how you really feel when he winks at you.
Some of the things that I do on a regular basis (skydiving, for one) don’t induce a tangible, psychological fear response in my body quite the same way that they do for others, but other things, like confrontation, can give me the heebie-jeebies.įear is a great motivator for day-to-day actions and broader life decision-making. Rejection, commitment, speaking up, meeting new people, uncertainty of the future. Spiders, heights, and death can cause hearts to skip beats and faces to blanch, but there are more subtle fears that can motivate with just as much force. Or maybe some part of me recognized the value in challenging oneself on a daily basis.įear comes in many forms. Perhaps they tickled the adventurous and fearless spirit I had exhibited from a young age, drawing my curiosity to things unknown. But those words of Eleanor Roosevelt, for whatever reason more so than many others, sunk in and took hold. As with many of his quoted or invented idioms, I dismissed it as a casual “Dad” saying with a roll of my eyes and the kind of smirk that only a worldly and wise young lady of fourteen can muster. It’s a phrase I recall my father saying to me when I was a teenager.
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