Welcome to The Door to E. A series-style newsletter for people obsessed with exploring, explaining, and expanding ideas to unlock human potential. Each week, I publish around 3 chosen series that share ideas, experiences, and stories to help you design your life.
This essay is a part of the Personal Growth Monday series.
Thank you for reading, and please forward this to anyone who you think needs to walk on the journey.
Dear Friends, Writers, Seekers, and everybody else
It's hard to do new things. As it should be.
Be it me trying to adjust to a metro city you trying to lose weight or we both trying to eat healthy or trying to get 8 hours of sleep despite having mind chatter around the new product you are building but lack a huge audience to test out (okay that one was a little too specific).
But the fact still stands true, Adopting new things into our personality or life is hard.
So instead of telling you about this stuff, I'll share something from my life
I suck at public speaking, but I did it anyway
When I was a 2nd-year college student, we had a class about learning life skills. One of those life skills happens to be effective communication.
Which at first I assumed relied on interpersonal skills, ya know, 1:1 type of thing.
But NO, on one random Tuesday afternoon, after having a somewhat heavy lunch our entire class was called into an empty auditorium.
That was alarm uno.
I should have known something was about to happen. But things were moving too fast for me to process (plus I was sluggish after lunch).
Everyone was seated, and the professor walked in from one of the stage entrances *clack*, bright lights turned on... and she said it, the words that I dread to hear...
Folks, you must prepare a 3-minute speech about a subject of your choice, you must come here, stand at the podium and you must deliver that speech to a room full of 67 people. And if you don't, you lose your internal assessment grade.
and that's alarm dos.
Ayy, Ayy, Ayy... this is my living nightmare all bared in words. I'm an introvert, plus I hate talking & to top it off I was so shy that I had no friends to give me some semblance of courage.
At about the 26th minute of a 90-minute class. I stood at the podium, with a mic under my nose.
My palms were sweaty, my knees weak, arms heavy (oh wait, I've started sprouting Eminem)
but yeah, my heart was racing, heavy breaths took over, I was about to choke on myself... things weren't looking good.
As things stand at this moment I have 2 choices
Quit - in which case I would have lost grades
Carry out and do as best as I could - which wasn't much
So, long story short, your guy chose option 2 and got through things as quickly as possible.
But that day gave me a lot to think about.
1. I did not fail as miserably as I thought I would
2. I did something that I thought I would never be able to do
3. Does this mean that if there are high enough stakes, whatever that's holding me back gets shattered?
And then an even weirder trip down the personality front happened that night: What was even holding me back to screw with me to the point of quitting?
6 Common barriers I found
After some deeply disturbing 3 weeks of journaling and confronting my self, I decided to check my symptoms for their cause on the internet (not the ideal place for something like this) and I found exactly what I was looking for
Fear of Failure
I've feared failure for most of my life, but that is because I feared being judged by my relatives and extended families as their kids were extraordinary in academics.
But recently I learned that the fear of failure is due to my perception of it -- I used to look at it as "how good am I?" or Self-worth to put it short.
Surprisingly, this holds a major part of the society back too. There are people with amazing skills and abilities who don't put them into practice, just because they fear failure.
I was the same (although I'm not extraordinary).
But the way I look at failure has changed for me, now I take them as trophies for everything new I tried and in my arsenal, I've got
failure of corporate
failure of employee
failure of service
failure of freelancing
failure of chemistry
failure of physics
and more...
The only difference now is, I love the fact that I've tried 10 more things than people around me, I've explored more and I'm better off for doing so.
it took a while, but the sooner you get comfortable with failure, the sooner you'll unlock potential because it's almost like breaking open a lock you've had since childhood and the schooling system.
Self Doubt
How do you know you can do something unless you've tried to do it? Well, I didn't and I assumed I would suck at it.
I believed that I would suck at writing too. But my love for thinking and writing won over my fear and self-doubt. I still struggle with self-doubt today when posting content online (like this one), sending someone a DM, or reaching out for work.
All that happens because I think I'm incapable of doing the work even before I give it a try, and that places my self-confidence in a bad place.
When then can land you in a world of hurt with... indecision, lack of confidence, and avoidance of challenges.
It's not like I've won this battle either, but there are a whole lot of us who go through crippling self-doubt and still do the things that should be done all because of the stakes.
Comfort zone bias
I'm an introvert, I don't like talking... so much so that for a big part of my life I've never once asked for help... ever. And I don't mean that to sound like a brag, it's the worst thing you can do.
That is also the reason I don't have many friends, because talking in front of new people scares me, not for failure or awkwardness but for fear of judgment.
Things would have been way easier and better if I just spoke up for myself or asked for a helping hand in a difficult situation.
Countless people avoid situations and events just because of uncertainty, even if the result could be growth.
Perfectionism
This is something that has been instilled in us by the school system... to see a PERFECT 100 Score. You strive for that for a long time, and it almost becomes a part of your personality sub-routines.
Striving for perfection isn't a bad thing, and if you are someone like me who love to be imaginative, creative and artistic... you get stuck with a certain vision in your head that you strive to put into the world.
And I get that feeling, but that could also lead to unrealistic expectations, leading to self-doubt, procrastination and harsh self-criticism.
And the worst part is that perfectionists area a package deal that comes with fear of failure and self-doubt, which makes them judge themselves harshly, even more than what others would think.
This can sometimes lead the person to stop making any momentum at all, leaving them stagnant for a long time.
Negative self-image
This is the only thing I have not experienced in a very long time. Partly because my experience in martial arts let me build up walls against this threat.
But I've seen people wreck their self-image, self-confidence, and whatever faith they had left. I even saw some of my friends go through this they experienced failure for the first time. The last thing anyone should do at this point is talk themselves down.
Because the mind is suggestible enough to believe all your talks. And that can result in low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, or a distorted perception of oneself, which can slow all your personal growth and self-improvement efforts.
Limiting Beliefs
Do you believe you don't have enough time to start that side hustle?
Do you believe that you cannot be a good leader?
Do you think you can't talk in front of a crowd?
Everything you think about yourself is your limiting belief, I think even if it's a good thing you believe about yourself, it's still a limiting belief.
And in a sense, they are okay because they help you construct a working identity about yourself that you project to the outside world. But make no mistake, those beliefs can change and should change if they are holding you back from your ideals and goals.
They aren't easy to break but it's better to break them early on as Limiting beliefs are deeply ingrained assumptions or convictions about oneself, others, or the world that constrain personal growth by creating self-imposed barriers and limiting potential.
it's like believing a 1-liter bottle can only handle 500 ml of water.
It's just plain false.
Final Note...
The only reason you might be stuck in starting your growth journey is because YOU are holding yourself back with your own beliefs and limits.
I can't say that these are all you have, but these are seen in almost everyone who tries to go from where they are to where they want to be as a person.
For me it was speaking and social awkwardness, for you it could be something else entirely.
But it is your job to find what's stopping you from being YOU.
So on that very preachy and downright cringy line, I bid you farewell
until next time
Be weird and curiosity
S
P.S. If you are interested in info products and building an information-led creator business, check out Wide Thinker Letters. Series issues go out every Sunday.
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