How to overcome your fears
Hey guys!
Since I’ve started this project I have come to realise a lot of important things and I’d like to share a few of those with you today.
Learning never ends
Learning by doing and teaching others are the most efficient ways to deepen ones understanding of something
You cannot rush things, everything happen’s at the right time
To overcome your fears you need to get out of your comfort zone
Learning never ends
When parents send their kids to school to learn, they kind of say that the only way to learn is by going to school. Children often think that adults know it all, that they know best and that children are dumb. Which is very far from the truth as we all know. In schools we also learn that the end result matters: the good grade, the certificate, the money we make, what we can buy with that money etc.
This means that we believe that once we achieve something we can be happy but as there is always something else to seek for, we can never be ‘good enough‘ and happy. This creates many different kinds of fears. I’ve had to observe my beliefs around this every single day while building APTB because even though I’m aware of it, I often caught myself thinking ‘once APTB is up and running everything will be fine‘. I’ve taken it step by step, learning new things along the way and tried to focus on today, not tomorrow or September, which is when I want to inaugurate. I’ve learned many different things during this process, about business, people, myself and more. And this learning journey will continue because life means learning. The moment a child is born she starts to learn. If you give this child the opportunity to simply follow her instinctual curiosity she’ll continue learning just because that’s what humans do. It will be part of herself and her life forever.
Learning by doing and teaching others are the most efficient ways to deepen ones understanding of something
After finishing school I taught myself everything I know now and what I needed for the jobs I did and my life. When you’re seriously passioned about something you often can’t help but share it with others and by doing so you deepen your understanding even more so (studies show that teaching others is the best way to learn about the topic you’re talking about). I can see this again, now that I’m doing things I’ve never learned at school. There are things that have scared the shit out of me just thinking about them but I knew that I had to learn to do them to get what I want so I’m stepping out of my comfort zone almost daily. Kids do the same. People think that if you let children just follow their interests they will always go the easy way and avoid things they are either scared of, don’t know how to do and that seem uninteresting to them, however, studies show quite the opposite. Just like what I explained about my journey of getting out of my comfort zone, kids do the same when they want to learn something, even if it get difficult and boring from time to time. Trust your children!
You cannot rush things, everything happen’s at the right time
While setting up APTB there were many occasions where I wanted things to happen right away and I had to learn to be patient because later I saw that if I had rushed the process I wouldn’t have been ready and things would likely have gone wrong. For instance, I wanted the documentary to come out in June but I had to wait more than a month. This was perfect because on one hand I was still struggling to overcome internal fears of doing things that were important for the business so I took the month to work on that. On the other hand, the month created a pressure that motivated me to pull my finger out and overcome these fears. Now I’m ready to pitch and it doesn’t scare me, I’m excited to do it! So don’t rush your kids, they’ll do everything when they’re ready. Pushing them to make them ‘brave‘ can go the other way.
To overcome your fears you need to get out of your comfort zone
I’ve written a lot about fears, getting out of my comfort zone and pushing myself already but what I’d like to add is that I believe that doing this in other areas of your life might help you overcome anxieties that are yet too scary to face. Every day I try to do something that’s scary. For example, when we went on a boat trip (The Pirate Ship tour here in Funchal…. it’s AWESOME!!!) I dived into the ocean even though I’m mortified of the sea. This has nothing to do with fears that I have around setting up APTB and tasks to do with it, but I think all fears are related on a deep level and when you work on one particular fear it will loosen the hold on you so that you will be able to approach those other things that scare you. Facing a fear and seeing that nothing bad happened definitely makes your realise that you are able to do scary things.
Again, facing ones fears is a very personal thing and the decision should always come from one self. It is nobody’s business but mine when I affront something frightening and how. The same applies to your kids.
However, children who grow up freely don’t even grow fear of failure etc in the first place… ;-)
I’d like to know your thoughts on this, so feel free to leave a comment below.
Yours
Sylvia
Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash
