The Importance Of doing SOmething That Scares You

Before moving across the country for college, my mother and father told me, “You better get out of this town.” To most people, this might come off as threatening or rude. That was everything I wanted to do for the whole duration of my senior year. My parents have consistently preached that being independent taught them the most important life lessons. So, when the time came to apply for colleges, I thought, screw it, ill apply to colleges from Oregon to Virginia. Eventually, I landed at JMU; when I visited, I thought the campus was beautiful, and the environment was exactly what I had always thought college would be like. What made the decision easier for me was the idea that “If I hated it, I can always come back,” meaning If I went to JMU and I decided it wasn’t that place for me, I could always come back to my home town college, or transfer to another one and restart. That is an important lesson many people forget when they do things that scare them. Instead of thinking about all the things that could go wrong or what is going to the negatives about what you are doing, just go out there and try, and if you fail, you can always do something else. This same mentality drove me to move across the country to a school I had known almost nothing about, with people I didn’t know. I found that when I arrived and started school, it was hard, and I did want to go home from time to time, but I stayed and tried different things. These would bring me more joy and allow me to meet other people, teach, and learn new things. I believe that when you try, things that once scared you become a lot less scary; the scariest thing to me is not trying. I think about some of the people from my high school, the people who never tried in class, who never tried to do something after school, and now they are stuck. Perhaps this may be due to their fear of doing something outside their comfort zone. To me, not wanting to learn or grow as a person just because you are comfortable with where you are in life seems like the biggest failure. Not wanting to see what you are capable of achieving, or what you are capable of learning, or where you are capable of going is a failing. Instead of this, I propose that everyone should do one thing a day that scares them. This one thing does not have to be big or something they are incapable of doing. It can be anything between going to the library if you don’t consider yourself a reader, meeting someone new if you think that you require a companion, or maybe just putting on that outfit you were scared of wearing because you don’t want people to judge you. Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady of the United States, was a big believer in this idea; she is quoted as saying, “Do one thing every day that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build the courage to do the work we do.”