But say, perhaps, you've been through trust issues, and putting yourself out there to new people is difficult and cause for anxiety. It's a good question how to get past that hurdle and keep moving forward with each hurdle increasing the chance that you could fall and be out of the race.
I know the worst thing you can do going in to a race is harbor fear. Anytime I let fear get the best of me, it inhibits my performance. This is comparable to fear of trusting...If you do not let people in, you will eventually end up pushing them away. Fear of failure will ultimately lead straight to it.
There is no clarity in this; no real answer. I suppose that most people struggle with letting outsiders in to who they are; it takes a lot to trust someone to love who you are without judging your character.
Easily said, not so easily done: Overcome your fears. Sitting back and worrying and holding on to fear gets you nowhere. The only way to let go of it, is to overcome it.
How? Be self aware. Know yourself and where the fear comes from--how it is affecting your situation. Ask how easy it would be to continue hiding from this issue, and then ask yourself how much harder would it be to conquer the fear by taking a temporary hard route to eventually gain peace of mind & clarity.
Sometimes you need to take a fear or a hard situation and look at it in a new way. I had a friend once tell me, look at a situation until it becomes a positive--until it becomes what you want it to be. I loved that, and I'll never forget it for the truth that's in it.
Something to remember about fear and your own thoughts is that you control what you fear. The situation mixes together with your personality and genetics and decides what you stress over, and how you handle situations and people. I've always been a worrier. On a scale from 1-10 maybe a 9.5. Miniscule things can keep me awake at night, and no rationale seems to offer a kind enough conclusion to the stress, fear, and worry I feel over things. I attribute my late night blogs to this and in writing personally thought-provoking solutions to issues I see around me or experience myself.
Even as a kid, my mom would come in to my room when I was up late worrying over something and ask me if I had control over the situation. When I would answer no, she would say, "there's no use worrying about something that is beyond your control." If you are my friend, there is no doubt that you've heard those words come out of my mouth, but its so much easier to say than to heed. Sometimes we don't have control and it causes fear. We all want to be in control, some of us feel it more strongly than others. But fear is RELATIVE. Fear can be lessened; fear can be contained.
The end all is that fear will own you. It will get the best of you in situations. It will smother you if you allow it to. The way to end fear is through self-introspection. Facing your fears doesn't mean that the fear goes away, but I can promise you that facing it will put everything in to perspective. Clarity can only be reached through taking such risk.
I've found in my life, that fear is mainly a feeling prior to facing what you actually fear. I've been so fearful of racing in an important race, giving a speech in competition, going in to an important interview, that I've been physically ill over these things. But once the gun goes off, after you get through the introduction, start relating to your interviewers, you realize that the less you think about what you are doing, the better you perform. My high school track coach used to tell a girl I ran with to 'run dumb' during the race. She would think too much about the competition around her and her placement in the race that she would blow it. But if she shifted her focus, she was able to do well. re-focusing fear in to something more utilizable to the situation can help cure fear.
"Fear is only as deep as the mind allows." -Japanese Proverb
"All I want is the wind in my hair, to face the fear but not feel scared"
"Wild horses, I want to be like you, throwing caution to the wind, I'll run free too."
-Natasha Beddingfield
