Fear “Fear”.
Fear. What is fear?
According to the Cambridge dictionary, fear is “an unpleasant emotion or thought that you have when you are frightened or worried by something dangerous, painful, or bad that is happening or might happen”. And I must say, fear is an emotion I’ve felt when we were skydiving…
Flying at 3,500 meters above sea level, on a tiny plane with 9 other people was not an extremely comfortable experience yet I was getting used to it. Then at one point, the instructor grabbed my wind glasses, and gently placed them on my face – that simple gesture resulted in a rush of fear within me. Earlier, the instructor had told me that when he puts the glasses on, it will soon be time.
My heart starting pumping. My senses were working on overload. I was about to jump off of a fucking flying plane that was working perfectly fine. A daring solo jumper opened the door, and I couldn’t look. I looked at Romy, and we kissed for courage & strength – that was much needed at that point. In the meantime, my photographer got out of the plane and 3 other people jumped. Then after 3 seconds, a guy randomly threw himself out and then, it was my turn to jump.And I guess that at that point, fear was once again on the top of my short-term priority list. We dragged ourselves to the edge of the plane, and after a couple of seconds we slid off. We were freefalling at 220 km/hour. And it was amazing.
I couldn’t stop screaming, and I couldn’t hear myself – I could only hear the sound of the wind blasting on my face. I could feel the sheer force of the wind pulling my arms, which made me feel like I am pushing the wind and actually flying.
…..I could keep on trying to describe the feeling, but I feel that it is impossible to simply explain how it feels.. you just need to do it….
And then.. whooff the parachute opens, the adrenaline still remains sky-high (literally), but now you can think and observe the awesome surroundings of blue seas and endless fields.
After around 15 minutes of gently coming down with the parachute, we landed gracefully on our asses, and that was it. For the next 2 hours I couldn’t sit down – my energy levels were too high for that :D
Fear.
People miss out on this extraordinary feeling, just out of fear. And I do get it. It might seem kinda dangerous. Fear keeps us alive. If we didn’t fear anything we’d walk into fire, and run into speeding buses. But we fear getting hurt. Which makes sense. Now let’s flip it on the other side. Do we let fear of failure stop us from chasing our dreams? Do we spend hours worrying about problems that never actually occur.
Where does fear/worry become dangerous in itself? When must we have fear of fear itself?
Fear keeps us from taking certain decisions in our lives about what we should and shouldn’t do. But sometimes we choose not to follow our heart because we fear we might fail. We do not take the course that we wanted because we fear failing. We do not talk to a person we like, because we fear we will fail in impressing them. We do not start our own business because we fear failing.
Why do we fear failing so much? And why does such a word exist in the first place. When you set out to reach an objective and you miss your target, you simply need to learn from what went wrong, improve your approach, and try again. And you repeat that process until you succeed. It might sound cliché, but this Hindi quote really does make sense “there are no mistakes in life only lessons to be learned”.
Missing out on living your true potential is the gravest sin you can do. You were given talents (and that applies to EVERYONE), and you must use those talents. Granted, some talents are more obvious than others. But if you search, you will find. And if you do not fear failure, but instead you only see opportunities for you to learn how to apply your talents in a way that can get you closer to your overall objective, you will eventually succeed.
It is said that once you decide on something, you must take action immediately. So, if while you were reading this, you were thinking about something you are fearing of doing, just know that you can stop fearing that thing now. Make it small. And grow the plan of belief that you can #MakeItHappen.
Take the first step now to do something to achieve whatever your heart is telling you. Just do 1 small step that will get you closer to your dream.
Now if you want to have an experience you will remember forever that shows you how you were able to conquer your fear, you can do a skydive.
Relax. It is 100% safe. There is an extra parachute, which automatically opens if the first parachute doesn’t open at a safe altitude. Also, the instructors have done more than 4,000 jumps each – so they know exactly what they are doing. Besides, there is their life at hand too. So, it is safe 😊 We did it ourselves, and that’s why we can say so.
