Brene Brown once said, “We can measure how brave you are by how vulnerable you’re willing to be”. While I know she is right, I can’t help being afraid of the word ‘vulnerable’. In my head, I ask myself what I am willing to be vulnerable to? What could I do to be more vulnerable? After much thought and a lot of fear, I realized what I am afraid of. I am afraid of working hard and failing. The fear of failure is very common in our world. Thirty-one percent of people have this fear, which puts it above the fear of spiders. The reason why I have this fear…
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The Fear of the Unknown
*Into the Uknown plays in the background* I think that we have had enough catchy Frozen songs to last a lifetime but what she says about going into the unknown is true. There are times when we have to face the unknown when we have to face our futures. Today, I met with my school advisor and she gave me the day I am going to graduate from college with my bachelor’s in communication. When anyone asks me what I feel about this, I always tell them, “a bit excited and a bit terrified.” Truth is that I have no clue about the type of future that I want. I…
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How a Car Crash Gave Me Peace
Last year, I was in a car crash. The car crash wasn’t my fault, instead, I was hit from behind after the car in front of me stopped short. The crash was sudden but I quickly moved to the side and got out of my car. It wasn’t until after I went to school and switched around cars with my mom that I realized that something was wrong with my head. I could speak right and I was really tired. I knew I needed to go to the hospital. They told me I had a concussion. I never had had a concussion before but it was during those next two…
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How to Use Confidence to Stand Out
Brittany is my older sister. She is two years older than me and is the most confident person I know. She is also the bravest. About a month ago, she and her husband moved from Utah to Tennessee. She moved there in order to complete her education in occupational therapy. Moving wasn’t an easy thing for her. She had no idea what anything was going to be like. “You couldn’t see the neighborhood,” Brittany said. “We were living in a different culture and I didn’t know what people were going to be like.” But even though she was afraid, she moved anyway. “I had fears and anxieties but I knew…
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How I Overcame My Fear of Failure
Failure is hard to confront. In fact, there are more people who are afraid of failure than there are afraid of spiders. This just shows how well we want to do in everything we try to accomplish. When we fail, it can seem like the end of the world and it can seriously hurt our confidence. This is why we need to understand that the biggest bully in our minds is actually not as big as we think. I know a lot about fearing failure. Every time I have an opportunity to do something I fear that I will eventually fail and I won’t want to start it. Some examples…
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How to Bring Back Lost Motivation
I am afraid of failure. This is not something I am proud of and it stops me from starting projects that I want to do. I will procrastinate even the simple things so I won’t have to look failure in the face. Failure is something that can take our motivation and throw it into the trash if we are not careful. So, the question is how can we keep our motivation up after we have suffered a setback? The answer is in a book that I am currently reading. It’s called “The Fighter’s Mind” by Sam Sheridan. In one of his chapters, he interviews Freddie Roach who is a former…
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How to Be Authentic
As people, we are afraid of what people think. When we live our day to day lives we might wonder if someone may be judging us or if they think that we are doing something weird or wrong. But we are not the only ones who are worried about this, Rebekah has thought the same thing. “I feel like I am shy at first and I’m worried about people pretending to be my friends because I think people are being my friends because they don’t want to hurt my feelings,” Rebekah shared with me. She has been deaf since birth so she knows what it is like for people to…
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The Secret of Succesful Change
Have you ever played a sport? One that required teamwork and perseverance in order to do well. When playing on that team, did you ever take over for a more experienced player? That change is exactly what Jarod felt when he moved from junior varsity to varsity for lacrosse. At the same time, he replaced the school’s star player, who had just graduated. When Jarod joined the new team, he found that his fear of failure was constantly running through the back of his mind. “The fear of failing with everyone’s expectations kind of got inside my head,” Jarod said. “I think at first [people’s] expectations pushed me to…
