A different perspective towards fear

Giving yourself permission to be wrong

It's 10 pm here, surprisingly it's a bit colder today as compared to the last few days. I just finished watching a teenage couple's argument from my window with a fellow audience member - a cat and now here I am sitting on the bed, crossed leg with a pillow at my lap, thinking about what should I write for this week's newsletter.

I have been thinking about the same question for the last 3-4 days and couldn't decide anything until I remembered the conversation that I had with a friend.

A conversation about fear of trying something new due to the fear of failure, overthinking, negative self-talk, " I can't stand failure, " not being able to see the brighter side, people will judge me, etc.

We talked, and she explained how she was feeling lost. She has some dreams that she wants to pursue but she is dismissing them. These things are affecting her, causing stress, and sadness in life and while she was explaining, I could relate myself to those words.

Because for a long time, I was someone who had many ideas and dreams but always dismissed them in my mind only. In fact, since childhood, I was never that person who decided on something and just went for it, even for simple things like choosing a toy or clothes. I couldn't get over that overthinking part.

For most of my life, I have been like that. Growing up, there were many times when I knew exactly what I wanted and what I needed to do for that, but still, I couldn't do it because I used to think far too ahead. If I have to give you just one small recent example out of all, then that is the Instagram page. I wanted to start it 6 months ago, before I actually did. The reason, again fear and overthinking.

And because of this fear thing, as a result, mostly I didn't try things in life and hence life never changed much. It only got heavy. I felt lost for most of the time. That feeling of regret and being stuck didn't go away for long but I'm grateful that as time moved ahead and I understood things better, I learned to deal with this thing in a better way.

I realized instead of " trying to be fearless" or doing something extraordinary, what I actually needed was to change the way I look at fear and things. What I needed was to separate my worth as a human being from the things I do, especially results of them. What I needed was to change the selftalk.

and one thing that helped me a lot with the perspective was again the book " The creative act "

Everything Rick Rubin has written in the book about art, dreams, trying, and failure etc are thoughtful and very effective and they have stuck with me. Some of the things he has explained are,

Taking a wrong turn⁣⁣⁣ allows you to see landscapes⁣⁣⁣ you wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

( While explaining how failures end up giving us the best and the most beautiful lessons of our lives )

Give yourself permission to be wrong and experience the joy of⁣ being surprised⁣⁣⁣⁣.

The pain of doing something and failing will always feel better than the regret of not doing it.

Past lessons from life and reflecting on these quotes and pages from the book, made me realize taking a decision and just going for something is the main thing, not the results. It made me realize how more than the good turns, we learn from the wrong turns we take. We grow the most as a human being because of them. We become stronger and meet ourselves new. Every moment when we think we have failed, only makes us lead to something that fills our hearts with gratitude. Things don't turn out bad, as how we think they will in our minds.

In life, nothing goes to waste and the time when we fail while pursuing a dream or trying something new doesn't make us less of a person or define who we are. The results are completely separate from us.

Above all, what actually is bad is to never try and at the end of the day we aren't going to take away anything with us, so we just might try and have fun.

Over the time, realizing all of these things was a relief and I just want to pass the learnings to you today.

Of course, as humans, we are concerned about survival hence it's natural to feel scared. We all feel scared. We all overthink, especially while making a big decision, Hence there is nothing wrong with that. We don't have to be fearless but just look at fear from a different perspective. The fears and thoughts that we feel are mostly shallow and we need to look for the actual truth behind them.

I'm sure you have many dreams, and I hope you are pursuing them. But maybe there are things that you wanted to start but never did, things that you have wanted to pursue for a long time, but you haven't started because of fear, maybe about failing, what will people think, it's tough, it will never work out, maybe you are doubting yourself or nobody believes in you, and a lot of overthinking.

And maybe even right now you can feel those dreams in your heart that you didn't act on, as you are reading this. If you are, then the only thing I want from you is to give yourself a favor and just start.

Go for that dream without letting the fear hold you back and without thinking about the results. What will happen eventually, we don't know, and it's not in your hands, all you can do is try your best and let life unfold.

Allow yourself to take a step. Allow yourself to go wrong and experience the joy of being surprised. Eventually, you'll only learn from it. You'll meet a better you along in your journey and you will receive lots of amazing things.

You will succeed and if unfortunately you don't to achieve that particular thing, then at least there won't have any regret. It won't change who you are and your worth.

And eventually, that will be a win only because the pain of doing something will always be lesser than the regret of not doing.

Hence let this sink in. A life better is waiting for you. Go after what you want. You got this.