One of the best things that we can do as learning and growing human beings is to do things that scare us. If it makes you hesitant or nervous, that’s how you know that it needs to be done. To forcibly put ourselves in fearful situations and actively work to overcome those fears is a valuable skill that doubles as a teaching moment as well. In other words, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
As humans, we are too accustomed to doing, feeling, and being the same thing. We reject change and become too satisfied with the regularity of our comfort zones – never feeling the need to question the totality of our potentials. Therein lies the problem.
Life is too short to remain stuck in the same place. Instead, life should be spent constantly evolving and discovering new things about ourselves. Instead of turtle-shelling at every unfamiliarity, we should confront the thing head on. Understand this: fear is inevitable. Fear can make you feel unworthy, small, and powerless, but if you do nothing to actively change that – then you are letting it control you. Acknowledge the fears, embrace them, and then triumph over them.
As a young black woman, there have been countless things that have frightened me, even something as simple as trying a new hairstyle. However, as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized how utterly disabling an emotion fear is, but only if I allowed it to be. Had I allowed fear to continue to control me, I would not even be close to becoming the woman that I am today. Nobody dictates what I will and will not do in my life but me and me alone. The second I recognized that I am a fully formed human being with my own agency, my fears began to feel so insignificant and small. Because of this, embarrassment and shame hardly exist to me anymore. To me, this is when life truly begins. The only way to live is to just live.
Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
Dale Carnegie