About Fear
If you had met me one year and a month ago and asked me if
you could call me, I would have adamantly told you that I hated phones and I
hadn't talked on one for about seven years. In other words “No way!” That's
changed though, because I had a friend who, one year ago this week, called me.
I was shaking so hard with fear for the first five minutes of our conversation
I had to sit down. I was so scared of facing a thing that I had not touched for
most of my life. The signal was bad, we kept cracking up, but I had so much fun because it was the first time I had ever heard my friends voice and we had
known each other a year. Over the past year I have talked on the phone about an
hour a week. Now, I am still not great on the phone, not at all! I still get butterflies
in my stomach just calling someone, but I still have pushed through it.
Fear almost always represents itself in distorted ways. I had
convinced myself that I just had a general hate for phones for no particular
reason. But the truth was, I was afraid. Afraid of sounding stupid, afraid of
people teasing me and of doing something wrong. In the end, none of this ended
up happening, but it was the fear of the imaginary consequences that I had conjured
up in my head that I stayed off the phone for half my life. Fear kept me from
taking a really simple step. Not every one of my phone conversations has been
perfect, and I have said some stupid stuff, but the joy I get from being able
to talk to some friends I might otherwise only email occasionally has been so
great I wouldn't give it up for anything.
Fear sometimes keeps us from doing things that really aren't
that scary once we actually do them. Don't let fear win today.
What’s one fear you have overcome?
