I have heard from a few people before that I’m fearless. Nothing can be further from the truth! I’m scared of pretty much everything… Heights… Tight spaces… Going fast and crashing… Snakes… Spiders… I could probably sit here all day and come up with new things that scare me. Over time though I decided that avoiding things that scare me is not living, it’s mere surviving. So I put on a brave face and get on with it. I’m not an adrenaline junkie though – I don’t seek out things that scare me. That would be crazy 😉
I still remember getting to the top of Lomnicky Stit in Tatra Mountains when I was in my tweens. I tried to walk over to the observation deck like:
I didn’t make it to the observation deck that time… It took me many more years to learn to deal with fear and not let it stop me from doing what I want to. Little by little, I learned to manage my own anxiety. I think that the best progression on that is dealing with my fear of heights. A friend of mine said he was going rock climbing and I decided it had potential to be fun. I started with easy boulders:
Yeah, I made it like a grand total of one foot off the ground. You can probably imagine my skepticism when my friend suggested top rope climbing. That actually ended like this:
That’s when I realized that I do a lot better dealing with fear if I have a back-up plan. That may be why I keep picking on my fear of heights: it’s the easiest to control and it never lasts for too long.
Races come with a good amount of fear, too. I am pretty sure it’s performance anxiety and fear of failure. When I was heading to my first marathon, I told only a couple of people because I was so scared I wouldn’t make it:
Joke was on me: the race was staffed by a lot of people I knew… It definitely stressed me out! They were so nice and supportive though. They definitely made surviving the whole experience a lot easier (but that’s a whole another story!). I did make it to the finish line and didn’t hesitate to tell everybody though 😆 That feeling was great! And, of course, I immediately decided that I will do it again.
I wish I could say it cured me of all fear, but I would be lying. When I was doing my IM70.3, I had a few ‘good’ moments of fear…
As I was getting ready to leave my hotel room, I suddenly broke down crying:
Yes, my personal SAG just started laughing. He was right and I knew it, too. I was being completely ridiculous! A good cry is good sometimes. I sobbed for like two minutes, took a deep breath and went off to the starting line. Waiting for the race to start was fun though and we joked a lot about observations of people around us. I was almost relaxed! That is after I got into the water:
Yes, it was bad. I couldn’t count on help from the outside. I was all on my own for this one! And that’s when I decided that mind over matter and carried on. As ridiculous as it sounds, counting off strokes 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 really helped. It got my mind off the distance and the cold and forced a rhythm. It was a short learning curve type of a lesson for dealing with fear.
We all face fear every day. For some, it’s a more intense feeling than for others. It has its benefits, as it saves us from doing stupid stuff (like deciding to swim in the middle of a cold sea, right? 😉). That shouldn’t stop you from living your life. Take a lesson from what I have learned in dealing with my everyday fears: take precautions and prepare for whatever is coming. Armed that way, you can remind your fear that it’s not really justified and you will do just fine, thank you very much.
But don’t expect me to pet any snakes or spiders though 😉