How I overcame my own fears

In this blog post, I am going to share how I overcame my fears and the lessons I learned from the books “Life’s Amazing Secrets” and “Fail Fast, Fail, Often”.

Starting with the first book “Life’s amazing secrets” by Gaur Gopal Das, here is a small excerpt from there.

“There is a traffic jam within our minds. And that traffic jam is stopping each one of us from reaching our true potential. Imagine if we knew how to clear this disruption. No fumes of insecurity causing us to cough, no one honking at us, distracting us from what’s important, and plenty of fuel to sustain us so that we can live a life worth living.“

Just like this, I have been experiencing a traffic jam in my life since 2015. I have been wanting to start a Youtube channel since then but the fear of failure, fear of facing the camera, and fear of what others will say honked at me, distracting me from what I wanted to do.

It’s not like I have overcome my fears. My fear is not gone, it's still there, even at this moment. I fear I might fail, I fear what others might think, and I feel I will not have any views.

Today I am just following the saying “fear the fear and do it anyways”. if I see myself down the line, making videos one after the other, my fear will eventually go down. It will be gradual but it will happen.

Let me put across a story I read in the book “Fail Fast, Fail, Often”

Once there was a standup comedian who was just starting in this field professionally in New York City. One day he went to a professional and experienced speaker, CK Louis, and asked him for some tips and suggestions for starters. CK replied -

I can’t help you at all. The only road to good shows is bad ones. Just go start having a bad time and if you don’t give up you will get better.

In the book, “Fail fast, Fail often”, the author says - no one dies by making mistakes or by doing the wrong things. Having fear of failure makes us lose out on opportunities for new growth. He says that people act in ways that guarantee failure to avoid failures. Successful people have a knack for performing poorly. They deliberately face challenges to see their limits and knowledge so they can encounter the unknown and learn from the experience. Do something that you have been wanting to do and permit yourself to perform badly at it.

The author also adds that the times when we grow and accomplish the most are the times when we make the most mistakes. Hence, making mistakes coincides with making personal progress.

The more you will fail, the more you will live and the more you will deserve a wonderful life.”

And as Gaur Gopal Das in his book “Life’s Amazing Secrets” says traffic jams are just within our minds, stopping us from reaching our true potential. However, if we acknowledge the fear, accept that it exists, and do it irrespective of the same, we will be able to achieve our goals.