Thoughts on fear

Everything we do in this life is hard in some way unless of course somebody else does it for us. For everyone the challenge is different – for someone to talk to a stranger or socialize at a party could be tough, some are afraid to express their opinion if it is different from the others', some can't stand public speaking, and some of us are afraid of the process of job search.

From what I have seen already in my life, practice and overcoming your barriers of fear is what leads you to some progress and opens the doors. And, first of all, this applies to the process of work search. Next, I will try to prove it with a few of my personal experiences.

Probably the first conscious challenge for me was connected with English. You know when you are in the first grades of school just starting to learn the language and somehow it happens that you get to meet a native speaker. Of course in that age in that situation you normally are with your parents, who have an oblivious illusion that you are almost a guru of languages because you once impressed them with a few classic introductory phrases, so they push you forwards and say go talk to that person, haven't you been getting good marks for English in school?

With me, that happened at my aunt's wedding, where I was surrounded with hundreds of relatives who expected from me to show the skills that my parents were bragging with. Thank God I was a fearless child who came to an American girl (she was in Ukraine doing her research for the Master's degree) to introduce myself and somehow she was amazingly kind to talk to me the whole wedding. I don't even know how she was keeping up with my struggles to express myself at that time but from all I know is that now, 15 years later she is my most amazing friend who helped me overcome that fear of trying something new!

Later in school I applied for the Scholarship to study in England, it was a superb experience of participating in that competition, but after I won, came the realisation that I need to actually go there, live in a foreign country, with no one whom I already know, with no one who speaks my language, with even no understanding of what the college life is like.

There I faced many challenges but the first one was connected with organizational processes. My parents don't speak English, so they couldn't help me much with talking to my college representatives about all the travel arrangements, enroll and other important aspects. All aspects of visa applications, tickets, transfers, documents, insurances- it's a completely new world for a 15-year-old. But so as everything in life, after you tried it you know how to do it! And frankly speaking, this challenge turned out to be the most amazing time in my life.

A bit later I started learning Spanish and when the time came to choosing my Masters degree I was sure that I can find a good program abroad, why not Spain I thought, and why not in Spanish. Applying for the program this time was also hard but at that moment I knew what to expect, having similar experience behind.

Now I work as an HR Specialist and deal with recruitment great amount of time. From what I can see the world of job search transformed drastically. Earlier you had to be walking around the city, knocking on companies' doors to ask if they have open positions. Now thanks to God and Internet you can do it all much faster and easier from your own home for example. But the ease of process did not eliminate the fear of chasing your dream. I hear many stories when people say that they wanted to work in the company but didn't know if they were good enough for the position.  

While studying I had to find myself a place for work practice and so I thought what can be easier than applying for an internship as they don't need to pay you and everybody wants a free worker. But it wasn't like that. I didn't know at that time that not many companies have internships and even if they do they don't have them all year long so that you can participate when it's comfortable for you. After I received a few emails saying that the organizations I wanted to apply to don't have such option, I thought that there was no other way than just knocking on the doors and overcoming the fear of asking HRs in person, which brought me to the most amazing internship in European Business Association, the only intern then.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have challenges on each step in our lives (if, of course, we are doing something and not just laying on the couch watching TV), and it throws you out of the comfort zone every time, but my opinion is that whatever the challenge is, you have to dare to accept it if you really want something that it can bring you as a result.