Do you pick a word at the beginning of the year and let it be your sort-of motto for the next 365 days? Me too! In 2018, my word was fearless.
Sometimes, I’m actually envious of people with tangible fears like heights or spiders, because at least they have a physical thing they can stay away from. However, my deep-rooted fears are the immaterial fears of “failure,” “disappointing others” and “not living up to my potential.” How are you supposed to avoid those?
Truthfully you can’t, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t given it a hell of a try for the last 28 years.
I tried a bunch of things growing up. Softball, art, piano, photography, novel writing, soccer, softball, dancing, singing, basketball, acting, modeling, etc. Each time I was trying to find that one thing that I was naturally good at, that I loved doing and that would one day become a way for me to go to college and have a career.
But to be honest, I wasn’t naturally good at any of these. The only thing I stuck with for more than a couple of years was theater and even then my lack of pitch and coordination pretty much prevented me from ever getting to Broadway so I quit that in college too.
I have mixed feelings about my eclectic dabbling. On the one hand, I wish I’d stuck with piano because it’d be a cool party trick to whip out when everyone is drunk and easily impressed. On the other hand, none of the things I tried growing up ultimately became my passion or career and I love what I do right now so #NoRegrets. Not to mention, most of these pursuits taught me one thing or another that I incorporate into my job today as a storyteller.
The reason why I quit as many things as I started was because if I didn’t get it right or perfect immediately, I felt like a failure. At the time, I was attempting to find that one thing I was amazing at without really trying. I wanted to be a savant if you will. I had it in my head that if I had to really try that meant that it wasn’t supposed to be “my thing.” If I really had to try then I could potentially fail which means it would be a waste of time.
My whole life I was afraid of failing and disappointing the people around me, namely my parents. I had such a blessed life. Even growing up I knew that I lived with a certain level of privilege but that didn’t mean there was an over-abundance of money. So even though I had the privilege of going to modeling school at 16, I also knew that it took sacrifice on my parents’ time and money to allow me to do that. So when I auditioned for a new play or begged my parents for art lessons, I felt pressure to make sure it was worth their sacrifice by being extraordinary.
Now I have a healthy dose of self-confidence, but I’m going to be real honest and say legitimately there was nothing extraordinary about my talent in any of the activities that I tried. And I never stuck with anything long enough to cultivate that kind of talent.
The older I got, especially in college, that mentality of wanting to make sure all that my parents had done for me could be paid back or labeled “worth it” got worse. I was privileged to have attended a four year private Christian university without a single loan. My parents paid for everything. Tuition, books, apartment, car, etc. But there was a weight that came with that blessing. It was the weight to achieve good grades, win favor with my professors, get promoted at work, graduate with honors and embark on my career as a top competitor in the workforce. Because if I could do and be all these things, maybe my parents wouldn’t regret all the checks they signed for me.
Everyday of my four years at college, I lived in fear that I wasn’t doing enough or succeeding enough or being enough. I went to graduate school, partly because I wanted to prove that I was smart enough to get a second degree that only 13% of the population have. I thought if I had my Masters, my parents would be proud of me and all the money and time they poured into me would again be worth it. However, what I signed up for was really another 2 years of living in fear of failure. Earning a Masters is hard. I was nowhere near the smartest person in my class, but I was so determined to prove I belonged that I wrote my 90-page final thesis a semester early as if that had any relevance on whether or not I belonged to this 2016 class of graduates. Fun fact: It didn’t.
After college, fear continued to follow me. I feared not getting my dream job. Then after a month of applying with no bites I started to fear not getting any job. When I got a job, I feared not being good at it so I worked extra and often unnecessary hours. When I got comfortable doing that, I feared getting stagnant and no longer liking what I did. When I got my second job, I feared that I still wasn’t doing what my heart desired and that maybe now I never would.
My fear of failure, fear of leaving my comfort zone and fear of disappointing others was starting to become a black hole of anxiety, depression and apathy. At 25 years old I was looking at everything in my past as a waste because I didn’t feel like I’d done enough with the blessings that had come my way.
It didn’t matter that I’d graduated with honors in both undergrad and graduate school in a total of 6 years with no debt.
It didn’t matter that I started my broadcast career producing a 2 hour morning show in a brand new itty bitty city in Illinois where I knew no one and bravely made my life there for almost a year all by myself.
It didn’t matter that after 8 months in Quincy, Illinois, I was sought after by a news director in Roanoke, Virginia to produce the morning show on the number 1 station in a top 70 market. That’s quite a jump from Quincy’s market of 171.
It didn’t matter that I was offered the opportunity to create my own segment on the show so that I could learn how to report and be on-air. Or that, I created a segment that quickly became one of the most popular segments of the morning show in less than a year.
It didn’t matter that after 5 years of dating, my boyfriend and I were finally engaged and 7 months away from getting married with a wedding that was once again almost entirely paid for by my parents.
In January of 2018, none of that mattered.
I still felt a failure. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was halfheartedly going through the motions of planning my wedding. I remember picking out my wedding dress just so I could stop trying them on. I remember turning down invites to hang out with my new coworkers because I was afraid that they wouldn’t like me or that they were only inviting me to be polite but were secretly hoping I wouldn’t show up.
To this day, I don’t know how I came up with the word “fearless” for my word of the year. It must have been a God-thing, because I was as far away from feeling fearless as you could possibly get.
Anyone who comes up with a word of the year knows that it sometimes takes a while to really understand what it means and how you’re supposed to apply it to your life.
For me it took two months. Then I knew what I needed to do.
I’d been producing news for two years and had gotten really good at it, but it wasn’t something I loved doing. How ironic, that I’d grown up searching for something I was naturally good at and as soon as I found it, it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
However, I needed to fearlessly step outside my comfort zone and pursue a goal I’d had since I chose this career in 2012. I needed to become a reporter. Not only did this scare me because I genuinely didn’t know if I would be good at it, but while I was figuring it out I’d have to do so on TV in front of thousands of viewers. If I wasn’t good at it, “the world” would see me crash and burn.
Here's one of my Instagram posts during this season of my life.
Now there’s more to the story between February when I had this realization and April when I finally got a reporter job, but we’ll save that for the “When People Tell You No” chapter.
I thought getting the reporting job would finally be the magic moment that suddenly restored my belief in myself, but instead my fear became amplified. Looking back though, I can see exactly how this season taught me how to turn that fear into confidence which in turn became a fearless pursuit of my dreams and goals.
I think it’s important to share an amazing quote by Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay cosmetics, (the company I joined twice but never sold a single product).
“Fear is the result of thinking. Confidence is the result of doing.” - Mary Kay Ash
Really think about those words. Do they speak to you as profoundly as they did me the first time I heard them in 2014? I love this quote so much it's hanging on the wall in my office.
Fear lives in our heads. Most of the things that we’re afraid of will never happen. Most of the things we’re afraid will kill us if they happen, happen and we survive.
Are you afraid that you’ll become an unlovable spinster if you tell a boy you love him and he doesn’t say it back?
Are you afraid that you’ll get fired if you ask your boss for a raise or promotion after working your butt off for the company for five years?
Are you afraid that you’ll be laughed at, mocked and shunned by your friends if you tell them you want to pursue your dream of becoming a writer?.
Are you afraid that you’ll end up homeless in the streets if you start a company that never becomes profitable and goes bankrupt?
Are you afraid that you’ll legit die from mortification of the soul if you attempt aerial yoga when you haven’t been to the gym in 5 years and can still see the results of last night’s pizza in your curvy figure? (Guess what! There’s no such thing as being embarrassed to death so you’re safe!)
Why do we let our fear of things that will likely never happen keep us from attempting a dream or a goal?
And if the thing we’re scared of happens, like being laughed at or being single forever or going bankrupt, so what?
There are very few things in life that will actually kill us that are worthy of a healthy dose of fear. Everything else we’re afraid of is literally in our heads and therefore DOES. NOT. EXIST. It doesn’t exist. Most of our fears are figments of our imagination. So let’s redefine what our fears actually are.
Fear of failure? A contrived notion we made up to keep us in our comfort zones.
Fear of not being perfect? A ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy because we won’t ever be perfect. Duh.
Fear of disappointing others? Who the heck are these “others” and what makes their opinions so worthy of your consideration? A great quote by the world-renowned author, Dr. Seuss is: “Those who matter don’t mind; and those who mind don’t matter.” Like, if someone is really so bent out of shape by a decision you make to give yourself the best life for you, then he or she shouldn’t be in your life.
Sidebar: when this person or these people are family, I 100% understand not wanting to disappoint them. But you need to ask yourself, is there a realistic reason why, with tangible proof, that they would be disappointed in your decision? Or are you just projecting what you think they’ll say or feel about your decision, therefore creating false narratives in your head that makes you feel one way or another about them?
Moving on.
Instead of fixating on the worst case scenario of what might happen if you actually did the thing you’re afraid to do, focus on the best case (and realistically more likely) scenario.
If you try aerial yoga, you’ll probably find that it is a hilarious, fun and challenging workout that’s a blast to do with friends and that those friends are too busy laughing at how ridiculous they look and feel that they’re not paying attention to how ridiculous you look. Trust me, no one except aerial yoga professionals look good doing aerial yoga.
If you ask your boss for a raise/promotion he might very well give it to you or at least show you the steps you need to take to reach that promotion. And if it’s not a good counter-offer, there’s no rule book that says you can’t quit and find a job that will appreciate you and pay you what you’re worth.
Here's one of my favorite photos from covering my
first election.
Here’s how my fear of pursuing my dream of being a reporter turned out.
I struggled a lot. There were a lot of bad days where I didn’t meet the expectation. There were days when I worked really hard to put a good story together and then stumbled horribly over my words during my live shot. There were days when four story ideas fell through and I spent most of my shift cleaning my desk and car. There were days where I woke up and felt so sick with anxiety that I would throw up in the bathroom for over an hour.
However, there were also days when I couldn’t wait to start working and didn’t sleep through the night because I was rehearsing what questions I wanted to ask and how I wanted to shoot the video for the story. There were days where I got to do really cool things and meet really cool people. There were days when the creative juices were flowing and I created a story from start to finish that I was genuinely proud of.
I’ll be honest and say I’m not naturally as good at reporting as I am at producing, but the more I practiced reporting, the more confident I’ve become about that skill set.
Seems pretty obvious, right? I mean your first day of college compared to your last is night and day because you’ve had four years of experience by the time you graduate. The first day you work out in five years is a lot harder than when you’ve built a habit of going to the gym for five years.
You need to get to the point where how you’ll feel at the end of your life if you don’t pursue your dream is scarier than actually pursuing it.
That’s what got me to pursue my dream of creating stories for television. I kept thinking about how I would feel in 5, 10, 20, 50 years if I never tried reporting. And I gave myself permission to be okay even if it didn’t work out. Maybe the grass wouldn’t be greener on the other side and that I’d try reporting, hate it and then go back to producing. I told myself from the beginning that I would not be a failure if I changed my mind.
After a solid year of reporting, I knew I didn’t make a mistake with this career change. There were days at the beginning where I cried so much and questioned why I’d ever wanted to do this in the first place. But soon the good days outweighed the bad. The days I felt fulfilled were more numerous than the days when I felt like I’d contributed nothing. Within that time, I found my voice and my style. The nerves of meeting new people, sticking a microphone on them and asking them questions that might take someone else 3 dates to ask, got easier.
When you take inventory of your life, where you’ve been and where you are now, I hope you feel empowered and not disappointed. I hope you see growth not digression. I hope you’re proud of the last five years and not wondering how the heck you ended up so far from where you wanted to go.
But if you’re not where you want to be and you’re scared of course-correcting, you’re not alone! I’ve been there and in some areas of my life, I’m still there. Becoming fearless is a life-long journey that takes daily practice, but it does get easier. You must find happiness in the process of pursuing your dream,not put off happiness until you’ve achieved it.
So if you are scared of taking that step and don’t know where to even begin, here’s some places to start.
1. IDENTIFY WHAT YOU’RE AFRAID OF AND WHY.
We can’t figure out how to get to our destination if we first don’t identify where we’re starting from. So you need to think about what you’re afraid of and why. Often I find this answer comes from thinking about those worst case scenarios I told you not fixate on.
Now, don’t fixate on those conclusions, but simply acknowledge that those possibilities exist (even if they are far fetched).
Then play the game I like to call “So What/Then What”.
It starts by allowing yourself to envision all the worst case scenarios and asking “so what if all those things happen”.
If I quit my job to pursue a singing career, I might not make it as a singer. So what?
If I don’t make it as a singer, I won’t have enough money to pay my bills. So what?
If I don’t have money to pay my bills, I’ll have to move in with my parents. So what?
If I move in with my parents, everyone will think I’m stupid for having given up a secure career for a pipe dream. So what?
If everyone thinks I’m stupid for pursuing my dream, I’ll never have any friends and die alone. Really?
The unknown is often what scares us the most and here you are making the unknown known. By acknowledging all the things that could happen should a pursuit not work out, you’ve actually taken away fear’s power over you.
By saying these things out loud or writing them down, you should be able to see two things:
A road map for how things might turn out if something doesn’t work (i.e. you can’t pay your bills and have to move in with your parents).
How okay you will be if things don’t work out. Moving back in with your parents isn’t the end of the world.
Now take your dream and start envisioning the best case scenario by asking yourself, “then what could happen?”
If I quit my job to pursue a singing career, I might find something I’m really good at and passionate about. Then what?
If I’m really good and passionate about singing, I’ll work really hard to book gigs and practice my craft. Then what?
If I keep booking gigs and practicing really hard, I could audition for a record label. Then what?
If I audition for a record label, they might sign me and I could play on even bigger stages and even record an album. Then what?
If I play on big stages and have an album, I could move into a bigger house or even buy my parents a new house. Then what?
Then I’ll have found a life of happiness and success doing what I love.
Doesn’t that sound a whole lot better?
By identifying the best case scenarios, you’ve also done two things.
Identified what it is you really want out of pursuing your dream.
And given yourself a road map to get there.
Now, at any point of your journey, you might hit a roadblock and have to figure new “so what/then what” directions, but that’s life. You’re not exempt for detours, u-turns, and dead ends.
2. SET DEADLINES.
You’re only given a finite amount of time on this earth, so stop putting off doing the things you need to do to make the most out of your life.
If you want to talk to your boss about a promotion, email him right now to set up a meeting.
If you’re thinking about changing careers, give yourself three months to explore all the options, weigh all the pros and cons, send out resumes, set up exploratory meetings with people in that field, research different companies, scout out new locations, etc. Set a date for when you’ll make your decision. If you say the second Monday in September, then on that second Monday in September, make the decision and don’t look back.
If you want to find a new way to work out, buy a three month membership at your local rock climbing gym, go consistently, see how much you like it, and if you like it but it’s not your favorite thing to do to get a work out in, then you’ve spent three months learning something new that you do not have to commit to for the rest of your life. (And while you might know something isn’t for you right away, I think three months is a fair amount of time to really test out the waters. They say it takes 30 days to build a habit, but it will probably take you 3 months to try a new workout for 30 days total.)
3. TAKE NOTE OF WHAT YOU LEARNED AND TRY AGAIN.
We’ve already acknowledged the fact that we will never be perfect. And if you’re embarking on something new, you’re going to be even farther from perfectionism. So to combat feelings of failure or of not being good at something, every single day you try that new thing, assess what you’ve learned.
Some of the greatest inventors, entrepreneurs, and leaders have a lot to say about the lessons we can learn from failing.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” -Bill Gates
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” -Michael Jordan
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” -Thomas A. Edison
For many of us, we’re not trying to empower entire countries to go to war or create something as revolutionary as the light bulb or the internet. For many of us, failure won’t end in the death of thousands of people. For many of us, our failure won’t even be publicly broadcasted on prime time television.
So why not just try? I mean you’ve already envisioned the worst thing that could happen by trying. So what? I really hope that whatever that worst case scenario is, you recognize that it’s still worth it to try. And that whatever the best case scenario is, you believe it’s worth getting over your fear in order to achieve.
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