As I jumped into this little adventure of living abroad with my three year old by myself, I get lots of people praising my courage. I feel rather uncomfortable with this common assumption that what I´m doing is so brave.
I mean, come on, let´s face it. It´s only for 7 months (originally). I have the money to do it. I have the youth to do it. My daughter is so young that even if I was into strict schooling she wouldn´t be missing anything.
I´m not experiencing much cultural differences, and hey, I´m in some sort of paradise where most people only dream of going (or work a full year to spend a week in). So what´s so brave about it?
Yet, I get full of fears too. When we are about to jump into totally new experiences, fear is a natural thing to feel. Like Karol said recently,¨fear of extraordinary experiences will never cease¨.
Here is a little list of what goes on in my mind:
Fear of not making friends
Fear of getting robbed
Fear of making the wrong choice to my little one
Fear of not having time to work and exercise
Fear of change
Fear of spending extra too much money
Fear of getting injured physically and then end up in some real shit (the only real problem in life is about our health)
I could go on, but let´s stop here.
On the other hand, do you know what I do? I send all these fears to hell. I tell my fears: ¨You won´t stop me from having remarkable experiences. You won´t stop me from proving you are wrong¨.
And if you guessed that in this battle against my fears I´m winning, you are right.
To all the fears that come to my mind, I make myself think differently:
I´ll make new friends
I´ll be safe
I´m doing the best for my girl
I´ll find time to work and surf, everything will work out
I´ll embrace uncertainty
I´ll keep in the budget
I´ll keep healthy and ready to do anything that comes my way.
But I don´t stick to a simple positive thinking. I take action to make the good things happen. I go for it. I make it happen. I throw myself out there and face my fears. Full on.
How about you, how do you manage your fears?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome post! It is very thought-provoking to think about how we process and deal with our fears.
To help with my fears, I think about the worst possible thing (or things) that can happen. If I think I can handle that, then I take action on whatever I need to do or I stop worrying so much. If I don’t think I can handle what the worst case consequences could be, I re evaluate what I am doing.
I also practice something called EFT. Dr Mercola teaches it and you can Google his name and EFT. Very powerful stuff!
It seems that I always have to do a lot of work on my fears, hehe.
Nice Beth, that´s another way to look at it, imagining what is the worst thing that could happen and think about it. I´ll check on the EFT, thank you.
I’ve just come across your blog and have been hopping around and doing a bit of reading, but this particular post spoke to me. I very recently went this very through process, with slightly different fears.
We’ve put her two girls in school (my sister is more into homeschooling in our home country), and they are enjoying it immensely. They’ve already had some amazing experiences.
Myself, my sister and her two little ones have embarked on a trip to Southern Spain in order to learn Spanish and experience life in a new country. We’ve been here for 2 1/2 weeks. It has had it’s challenges, some that I was expecting and some that I was not. We are now settling in and have gotten to the point of discussing whether or not we should extend our stay.
I am looking forward to continuing to reading about your experiences and your settling into another country and culture.
KC
KC, that´s brilliant, we are in such a similar situation. I´m just about to put Luísa in some kindergarten here as well. I´ll check on one tomorrow. Please, let me know more about your journey as it evolves, you can e-mail me anytime too.
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