The Fears That Make Us (Unnecessarily) Quake

The Fears That Make Us (Unnecessarily) Quake

It was my second week of middle school, and I was terrified about my first science test. I’d spent the last six years in a sheltered, easygoing primary school, and it was frightening to walk the noisy corridor of unfamiliar kids, the science lab looming at the end of the hallway.

To cope, I told myself that I wouldn’t remember this day, this trial, this test, by the time I was thirty—an age that seemed impossibly far off—so why worry about it now?

That mental trick relaxed me enough that I ended up doing fine on the test. Soon test-taking became not such a big deal. But the funny thing is, I’m forty-seven now, and I do remember that day, that trial, that test.

So my seventh-grade self was wrong. But also right. What I had really been telling myself was that by the time I turned thirty, the test wouldn’t matter anymore, that I’d be able to look back at my formerly quaking self with compassion and perspective, and that everything passes—even fear. Especially fear.

What fears make you quake today?

 

SUSAN CAIN is the co-founder of Quiet Revolution LLC, a company dedicated to unlocking the power of introverts for the benefit of us all. Susan is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller QUIET: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, and her record-smashing TED talk has been viewed over 10 million times. Sign up here to receive updates about the Quiet RevolutionFollow Susan on Twitter @susancain, and on Facebook

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Cal Stowe

Cutting Research Manager at Baker Oil Tools

9 年

Confidence is the belief that you can handle failure. If you can handle failure, you have nothing to fear. It is counter productive to teach our children that you can and should get it perfect - make a 100. This focuses on measurement rather than learning, and evaluation over "getting the job done" later in life. We should teach our children to accept failure as the process toward achievement.

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Niklas Lindberg Linto-Lindefors Hook

??Prototypes-Tooling-Automation??Linto-Lindefors Hook Sweden??

9 年

??????

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Habib Khalaj

Managing director - +98 9021117412

9 年

Very Nice

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Charles David U.

Independent Thinker and Writer

9 年

Hi, again, Danielle Gauthier. Try practicing mindfulness. It is a different thing from just paying attention, and it might help as you try to remove that white blanket of anxiety. If mindfulness does not work, try hypnotism. Based on how you describe your current responses, it almost sounds to me as if someone hypnotized you into not believing in yourself. Time 2 flip that story line! ~ CDU

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Andrew Brown

Seeking employment. Accounting Specialist.

9 年

Great share, Sid Johnson! Thanks!

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