Hello, everyone.
I welcome you to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learner's featured post. One thing I have learnt about fear is that if you let it, it will cage you, and once it has caged you, it is nearly impossible to break free from its shackles. Once you give fear that room, it starts to make decisions for you, and those decisions are not the ones that favour you or help you grow, and that way it keeps you a prisoner for a very long time. Even fear knows that there are certain decisions you will make that you will outgrow, so it does everything possible to stop you from making those decisions.
Fear is something we all have to deal with; the only difference is how we deal with and how we overcome it. Fear eats you up from the inside out; if you don't stop it on time, it will leave your inside completely empty. It is not easy to defeat one's fears, and nobody said you must defeat your fears completely; it can be there, and you learn to do what benefits you and helps you grow. Your fears can still be there, and you just learn to live with it and not let it stop you from making those decisions you know will bring you the breakthrough you need.
Some months back I saw a job vacancy advert, and I decided to apply for it and see what comes out of it. I have always been the shy type and hate public places, but life doesn't care what we like and don't like. After graduation from college, I am expected to start doing something for myself fully and not only depend on my little income from online gigs. Weeks went by, I did not get any response, and just when I was about to give up and my fear of being in public places told me that public places are not for me, they reached out and scheduled an interview.
Now I have to deal with my fears and how much I avoid public speaking. At that point I did not want to show up for the interview, so I kept avoiding public places and also kept staying in my shell and not getting noticed at all. It was a battle, and it was very much a chaotic one going on in my head. My finances from just online gigs were no longer enough, expectations from family were now very high, and I just knew I needed this job more than I needed all my fears of public places and public speaking, and I had to start preparing for the interview.
On the day of the interview I showed up scared but prepared. I entered the interview room scared, but I did it anyway because I knew how much a lot of things depended on it. I have had previous experiences with public speaking, and it is not like I am very bad at it, but I just fear it, and I avoid it until I cannot, and that has kept me hidden for so long, and now I am seeing that act is only limiting me and stopping my growth, and that is my fear keeping me within reach, so now I have learnt to live with it; when need be, I set it aside and do what needs to be done.
I got the job, and like expected, things turned around, and even I saw how much my fears would have taken from me if I was not bold enough to make that move. I would probably still be relying on online gigs where the pay was stable and varied. Nobody is saying you must defeat your fears; just know when to face them and not let them keep you back.
Images were generated using chatgpt.