Face Your Fears...
Last week I went to Go Ape, an outdoor adventure park, for the first time. While up in the trees for 3 hours, I started to think about how much of a huge role fear plays in our lives...
Happy New Week Everyone!
Last week I went to Go Ape, an outdoor adventure park, for the first time. They have treetop rope courses and I did the 3 hour Tree Top Challenge. As I was there for a long time, with no phone, I had a lot of time to think and it just had me thinking about how much of a huge role fear plays in our life. In this week’s newsletter, I will share some learnings from my time in the trees.
Firstly, for those who don’t know, I am extremely scared of heights, so I had to face my fears and get comfortable with discomfort. In life, fear can paralyze you and hold you back from living your best life. Will Smith said, “the best things in life are on the other side of fear”. If you want the best things in life, you are going to have to do some things that scare you. Whether that’s leaving a comfortable job to start a business, reaching out to strangers, putting out your work, etc. You can't let fear get in your way of success.
There are 3 different types of fear:
Fear of failure - when you’re scared to fail that you don’t even start
Fear of success- being afraid of achievement, often to the point that people will sabotage themselves.
Fear of judgement- as social beings we want to be accepted and don’t want to be judged by others.
If you don't face your fears head on, where's the fun in that? While I was up there, someone said something that stuck with me, “if you don’t face your fears, you’ll just have a boring life and no interesting stories to tell.” which is so true. As you get older, or on your deathbed, you don't want to look back and have a bunch of regrets. They say “the graveyard is the richest place on Earth.'' There are so many people with music, films, books, and many other great ideas in them, dreams they never actualised.
Another thought as I was high up in the trees was the fearlessness of children. There were children as young as 5 years old up in those trees, some participating in the junior adventure, some participating in the same challenge as me. Do you remember being young and fearless? As you grow up the world conditions and instills so much fear into you. You have to be as fearless as a child, don’t care about how you look, how big or tall the obstacles are, and just do it.
I was with a young group and I spoke to one of the guys behind me and asked them why they’re so chilled and not scared. They replied saying “firstly you have a harness so you’re not going to die”. This raised an important point that in life no mistake is too fatal, as long as you still have breath in your lungs you’re still good. When you fail you don't start from the same position, you start with more experience, more knowledge, and more confidence as it’s not your first time. People have had it all and lost it and had it all again. As long as you are relentless regardless of the obstacles life throws at you, you get back up, dust yourself off and go at it again. Nothing can stop you when you have a strong drive and commitment to your goals.
Lastly, when you go up on the ropes you go in a group of 14, you can’t have more than 3 people at one station at a time, you cant have more than one person on the challenge at a time. This means you have to be extremely patient as not everyone will be able to go at the same speed as you, some faster, some slower, which is just like life in general. You can’t expect everyone to go at the same pace as you. We all run an individual race, so you too can try and keep up to everyone's pace. Just focus on your pace, run your own race, put one foot in front of the other and you’ll get to your destination eventually.
This wasn’t a newsletter to encourage you to get on the ropes at Go Ape but to face your fears. As mentioned earlier “the best things in life are on the other side of fear”. You know what you desire from life and it’s not going to come from a place of comfort. Once you start building this habit of overcoming your fear, you will look back one day and be so proud of yourself that you made that decision to feel the fear and do it anyway. The pain of regret weighs tons.
Have a great week and face your fears this week!