urntoalone.com – Jennifer Anne Carron June 6 2015
Take a walk with me for a moment. No pretences, no judgements, no malintent. Just walk with me.
I want you to reflect on what I just said. How did it make you feel? The reason I asked that question, was simply because its a confident statement.
Confidence, is a welcoming emotion. It’s a warm feeling that when conveyed, more than often has the same comforting response.
Now think about this. Think of the first time when you really feared something. The first time that you felt your vulnerability. The first time that you were shaken. The first time that you realized you had no control over what was happening. When your heartbeat raced, your adrenaline rushed from fear, and you knew that you were no longer in control.
Confidence, whether it is your best friend, or your worst enemy, is a primal force that tugs and pulls us in one direction or another. Confidence is just that, a force. To be honest, its often left unchecked. However, it can be tamed. If you look at parts of yourself, and wish certain parts were more confident, there’s good news, there’s a hack for it.
I had an amazing opportunity to see Chris Hadfield at TED talks in Vancouver. Chris is a Canadian astronaut that has spent hundreds of hours aboard the space shuttle and the International Space Station. He has an amazing ability to change your perspective on something quickly. He has an amazing ability to connect.
We were all expecting to hear stories of low space travel. The, human, aspects of accomplishing the little tasks to achieve that feat. Instead, he spoke very shortly on an unexpected topic.
And this is what he talked about….
We live in a world where confidence, should not really be an issue any longer. Think of this, have you ever walked through a spider web… and just lost it? Now arm yourself with this knowledge, there are only seven spider species in North America that are poisonous, that can hurt you. Compare that to the odds of several hundred of species that cannot hurt you.
Now that you know this, next time you see a spider web, don’t be afraid to touch it, to explore, to enquire about it. In doing so, you will go against thousands of years of conditioning that still affect us. You will in fact have broken out of fear, you will have done something unexpected. You will have done something confident.
I believe that we have this amazing ability to demoralize ourselves. We are really good at taking a step down, and not a step up. We also have an amazing ability to suddenly turn our way of thinking. I challenge you to break out of the cautious learner way of thinking. To do something unexpected. To do something, with confidence. That’s the hack. To realize that you can sidestep fear. To realize that the chance of being hurt are fractional compared to the possibilities of learning something new and moving forward.
Above all, enjoy the exhilaration of the moment. Always, I look forward to your comments and feedback.
With love…
Jennifer Carron