The other day, I got a crucial life lesson from the most unlikely source: my job interviewer.
After asking me about some things I’ve been through, the interviewer had shared with me her own trauma. Then she offered this advice: “Name your fear. Then tell yourself, ‘I am bigger than this fear.'”
And she was right. Naming it did help. I did not always feel like I could conquer it, but identifying what scared me helped me accept the emotion instead of trying to squash it and pretending it does not exist. The very recognition makes things a tiny bit more manageable.
Tim Ferriss, author of The Tools of Titans and The 4-Hour Workweek, offered very specific strategies about managing fears. In his TED talk Why you should define your fears instead of your goals, Ferriss suggested we separate the things we can control from the things we can’t control. And for those things we can do something about, we think of solutions. Then, we think about the benefits of those actions, as well as their possible costs.
Toward the end of his talk, he shared this quote from Jerzy Gregorek:
“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”
Up till now, I believe the hardest decisions I made were the ones that, eventually, brought me to a much better place. They weren’t easy and I am still grieving their costs. But looking back, even if these decisions were a series of imperfect solutions, I’m thankful for the many good things that happened–and continue to happen–along the path I have chosen.
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