Is fear driving your decisions? Is it driving your life? Do you allow the fear of what other’s might think control your actions? I know that I’ve felt that way in the past. I’m not sure what, exactly, changed that for me. I don’t know if it was simply getting older and more mature. If it was taking public speaking classes in college, or having a profession that I constantly have to present my work to clients. I just stopped caring what other people thought of me. Because, one, it takes to much time and effort to constantly be concerned about the opinions of others, and two, people’s negative opinions about you just don’t matter.
What someone else thinks of you should not dictate your self-worth.
It seems like the abundance of access to other people’s lives through social media just increases the amount of negativity brought on by fear. People being afraid to post a photo of themselves because they are worried about what people might think, what the trolls might say. There’s no stopping people like that from commenting, BUT you can control how you react and how you internalize it. You cannot let it get to you.
Fear can be helpful in some situations (it can make you run faster and farther if you are being chased by a bear, for example), but for the most part, fear is useless. Why should you be afraid to do things that can have a positive impact on your life? What can fear of failure save you from? Why is failure a bad thing? What says that you will fail at all? STOP BEING AFRAID TO FAIL! Be afraid of not trying in the first place! Ask yourself this, “If I keep doing exactly what I’m doing right now, what will my life look like in 20 years?” Will you have regret when you look back? If you answered yes, I encourage you to write down everything that you would like to be different 20 years from now. Make that list and put it somewhere that you can see it every day. Work toward each goal, regardless of how much it scares you. Because it’s better to have failed at something that to have never tried it at all.
Training yourself to be more confident and less afraid is just like any other habit that you try to break. It takes time and effort. It’s said that it takes 21 days to create a habit, or to break one. So, why not break the habit of being unnecessarily fearful? What can you gain from being able to push that fear aside and do the things that you want to do? I bet it’s more than you even realize. So be FEARLESS! Go out and get your goals!
