OVERCOMING FEARS

What fears have you overcome and how?

I’m not sure I can exactly describe these fears that I have, but the closest it has come to describing them is the fear of immense success. In fact, I think that this may very well be the correct description of that fear within.

Where does it come from? I have absolutely no idea. In my late teens and early twenties, I was very proactive about succeeding at a lot of things from academics to political and social endeavors. Failure was largely an alien concept. I won social capital by simply just trying what most people thought was out of reach. I have pioneered much more than I have inherited a preexisting order in most aspects of my life.

In my home country, it was an enjoyable experience. Fast forward to becoming an immigrant much later in life, beginning to struggle with coming to terms with a society that seems to be going anti-clockwise to the rest of the world, meeting a lot more with colossal and frequent failures, seeing other dangerous and destructive aspects of humans that I didn’t know existed, and most importantly watching the constant justification and normalization of those bizarre behaviors…shakes me.

I have wanted to be more invisible than I’ve wanted to be seen. I don’t think I want to deal with the constant attention and expectations of perfection that is placed on successful public figures. I don’t think I want to deal with that hyper-vigilance that people in positions of authority seem to have to deal with. I don’t think that I want to deal with having to engage in dysfunctional mind games to try to determine ‘friend or foe’ at all times. It’s tiring.

Do I want to be successful? Very, very successful. Do I want to deal with the incessant attention and social attacks that come with it? I can’t say same. Am I going to stop trying to be successful? This one is an interesting ask. What do you think?

But I’m not succumbing to this fear entirely. Rather, I’ve defined what success means to me on a personal level, and I have examined my beliefs around my definition of success and also built my values around it. You see, if you’re playing a game with rules that are designed by you, then you almost always know what you’re doing and when you need to readjust your rules.

Do you have a fear? How strong is its grip on you? Are you able to shake it off and keep moving? Does it stop you sometimes? How do you keep it tamed? Share!