Putting Yourself Out There
In whatever capacity, putting yourself out there can be scary. It could be sharing your next goal, going back to school, telling someone how you feel, speaking up for your beliefs or values, or even owning up to a mistake. Putting yourself out there is scary because it’s a risk, and risks come laden with a lot of unknowns. The unknown of how it might be perceived or received. The unknown of how it may or may not impact your future. The unknown of how it will change your situation or the dynamic of a relationship. Because you are a Brave Changer, we already know that change is a natural progression of life. Change is necessary for inner growth, wisdom, and strength. We need change for these reasons, but when faced with change, it can cause stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and all those similar feelings within that circle. However, overtime as we adjust and adapt, the change becomes part of the norm, just as everything before. When we look back retrospectively and reflect, we can see how far we have come, know we survived, and this can build resilience and hopeful help us attain a little more confidence to put ourselves out there once more.
Accepting Change
One of the hardest parts about change is acceptance, because often it is first met with resistance. This is normal. This is okay. Acceptance of change takes time because it is a process. Sometimes we need to go through the stages of grief before we can accept change, and this is because we are grieving not only what we may have lost or what may have changed, but we are also grieving the future of what would have been.
It’s also important to know that each change has its own respective timeline as it relates to acceptance. Adjusting to and accepting a new haircut has a different timeline than that of a breakup, generally speaking! So be patient with yourself as you navigate through changes. Acceptance will come with time.
It is also okay if some acceptance is a life-long process. Accepting our body may have one of those relationships. This is because our bodies are ever-changing, so acceptance of our body may be in a dynamic state. An antagonist of acceptance is comparison. Comparing our journey, our relationships, our education, our income, our body to someone else is unfair and does a great disservice to our self-worth. Comparing yourself doesn’t help you reach the finish line any faster, if anything it just adds an extra burden and weight to carry as you run the race. Allow yourself to let go of the comparison and go at your pace. This is your journey, so allow yourself the grace to take the time you need.
The F Word: Fear
When putting yourself out there, fear can be thought of as the enemy, but fear can actually serve as a form of protection. Some fear is healthy because it can keep us from doing things that might be harmful. However, sometimes fear leads us to quit before we have even started. Fear can lead us to question or doubt ourselves. During this time we can feel lost, out of control, or afraid, and then insecurities or worries can begin to arise from the surface. Fear has a greater snowball effect than we may initially realize. Fear can hold us back from taking chances, and then we miss out on life experiences, like meeting new people, trying new things, or expressing ourselves unabashedly. Some of the best memories or best connections can be made by feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
Sometimes fear can lead us to a crossroads, and we find ourselves asking, what is the next right step?
The thing is, in most cases, there really isn’t a right step, because this implies there is a wrong step. This dichotomy can even be found in our language when we talk about food, which is this idea of “good” and “bad” foods. Although seemingly neutral, this internal language we have within our thoughts are more powerful and impactful than we may realize, and has the ability to either positively or negatively effect how we feel. Having awareness of how we speak to ourselves is just as important as how we speak to others.
This fear of choosing which path to take might come from this idea of permanence. There is this thought of, if a choice is made and it leads down one path, the fear is consequence that one must remain only on that path without deviation. The truth is, we have the ability to turn around at any moment or take another path entirely. In other words, you have permission to change your mind.
We can only make the best choice with the information we have at the time. As we go down a path and have more experiences, and we gather more information than started with, and that could change how we may feel or think about the current path we might be on. We can only ever do our best, the rest is out of our control, so allow yourself the permission to change your mind.