How to fight the fear of trying new things?

Dad: Youuuu can do it. Youuuu can do it, said my dad.

Me: I don’t want to, I don’t want to Dad.

Dad: But, Why?

Me: Because, I am afraid.

Dad: Aditya, What’s the worst that could happen?

This was my conversation with my dad, when I was learning to ride a bicycle.

After some time, I sat on my bicycle like a pro. I started riding like a pro, until I crashed into an auto rickshaw like a pro.

Finally, I learned to ride a bicycle in a matter of few hours.

A few hours before, I was scared to death to ride a bicycle. Now, I have learnt to ride a bicycle.

How did it happen?…

On my Winter vacation, I decided to go on a trek. I also wanted to try skiing from a long time. So, I choose a place Auli in Uttarakhand, where I could Ski and Trek together.

After a journey of 24 hours on 2 Flights and a Bus, I reached the Skiing Camp.

I started to roam the streets in the Hill Station. I got a nostalgic feeling of my childhood. I remembered the days in my village as a kid. Small village, small shops on the roadside, friendly people who knew almost everyone in the place. Some people asked about me so much as if they were going to write my Biography. It felt like “The more remote I went, people became more humane and friendly”.

First day of the skiing, we went through a rope way in between the mountains. The view was spectacular. One look and all the peaks around filled my eyes. The snow-capped mountains, Cool Breeze and the Blue sky. I felt like I was literally on top of the world.

A few minutes of walk and we reached the destination. We were taught the basics of skiing like how to put on the skiing shoes and skis. We were trained for 5 hours every day for 3 days. We started skiing on relatively smaller skiing tracks.

On the 4th day, we climbed up one of the big hills. To put it into a perspective, the skiing track was as high as 10 floor building is. After 15 minutes of walk with the heavy skiing equipment, we were finally at the top of the hill. Then our trainer instructed, Aditya now… go down the hill, Skiing. I looked at him and said “What. No”, I’m just 22, I think I want to live a little longer. He said youuuu can do it. I said No. I took my time and sat on a small rock nearby. While I was sitting there, I saw 2 kinds of people:

1. People who were dead scared and went back to ski in the smaller skiing tracks.

2. People who skied down the big hill effortlessly.

After some time, my instructor came up to me and said, Aditya, What’s the worst that could happen. It reminded me of my childhood. The time when I was learning to ride my bicycle. Finally, I gathered my courage and took a leap. The Leap of Faith.

Even though I fell down half the way, the entire feeling was amazing. After that I skied down the same hill about 50 times. I might have fallen down many times. But, I didn’t stop. I kept going down the same hill.

When I learned to ride a bicycle or When I learned to ski on the toughest of the mountains, the one thing that made this happen was the leap of faith I took.

On the journey back home, I kept thinking, how is my leap of faith different from the barriers in our everyday life.

Changing Careers, chasing dreams, trying to achieve our goals. There are times in our life, we need to take a leap of faith. Next time when you are afraid of something, I want you to think “What’s the worst that could happen”. If you can’t think of anything significant, take the leap of faith. Don’t just stop because you’re afraid of failure. Embrace it. After all, Failure is the stepping stone to success.

There are 2 kinds of people in this world:

1. People who get succumbed to the fear and stay sad for not achieving their goals.

2. People who gather their fortitude and take the leap of faith to become nothing but successful.

I want to gather my fortitude and take the leap of faith. Are you ready to take your leap?