Day 28: how will you overcome *those* fears?
Think of three things that daunted you in 2012: how are you going to work towards overcoming them in 2013?
I continue to suspect that all my fears come out of the one super-fear: that of being thought to be an idiot. This certainly accounts for fears one and two:
1. Talking to people;
2. Sharing my work;
Interestingly, this phases in and out depending on context. Work – actual assigned job work, I mean – gets most of my best brain time, so I tend to be pretty good at talking to people – strangers and colleagues, as appropriate – and have no qualms about saying “look at this newsletter I have written! is it not glorious?” And this is because work is a case where not doing all this would make me look like an idiot, so I have to.
It also phases in and out depending on my overall mood. As with all these things, I think the answer to becoming less scared is to practise more. I used to have a rule that I’d make myself talk to at least one person every week after church, rather than dashing straight for the door. Now I’m on collection duty this is less easy to manage. I must find other people to talk to.
Fear the third comes from somewhere completely different.
3. Looking at myself.
Not physically (though it’s sometimes difficult as we have no helpful mirrors), but, I don’t know, mentally or emotionally. Not wanting to prod myself too hard in case I find that I don’t like the person under the mask, in case she isn’t the person I want to be.
The way I’ve found to deal with this one is time to myself, and a blank notebook. This year, at the retreat I went on with church, I had this huge thing that was squatting on my mind. I spent a lot of the Greater Silence sitting up late and writing the whole lot down. And then I looked at it and went, ‘Is that it?’
Kathleen Jowitt 