COMFORT IS ANESTHESIA I’m not sure if you remember your first kiss, but mine was a disaster. I had

Trying to stay in your comfort zone and letting fear get the best of you will always choke your creativity and sabotage any chances you might have of succeeding. In order to achieve any worthy goals, you must start realizing that discomfort is a prerequisite for success. In his teaching, The Life Excellence Plan, Stephen McGhee wrote “You make yourself feel uncomfortable by stepping into uncharted territory. You allow yourself to rise up.” Being too comfortable is a sign that you are at a standstill in your life. In this world of convince it’s easy to get comfortable and fall into a life of mediocrity. No risk, no reward. On occasion we can get so comfortable with where we are in our lives that we no more test ourselves to push ahead in life.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ The danger lies in refusing to face the fear in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” That was a quote said by Eleanor Roosevelt.

over time, the fears you’re facing will actually drop and eventually disappear. It will take time

Research shows that many of us don’t follow through on the goals we set or don’t keep the promises and commitments we make to ourselves. When we repeatedly fail to make and keep commitments to ourselves, it hacks away at our self-confidence. This lack of self trust undermines our ability to trust others.

I have always been afraid of people even when I was younger and in primary school I had this irrational fear. I hated school because of it. School was mortifying for me and I would cry, but I would cry before any of the other students arrived. I think I was afraid of my own emotions back then and I still am, but i’m trying to walk one step at a time across that imaginary bridge of fears I have. I don’t think i’m anywhere close to fully crossing it yet, it’s like I take two steps forward and one step back. Now that i’m in highschool, I realise that I have to get across, and soon because if I don’t get across I’ll fall to my doom. Everyday the ropes holding the bridge up are unraveling, I know I must move fast, but I feel as though my fears outweigh my confidence. But, I have been challenging myself and taking just one small step at a time to cross the bridge of fears. I wear clothes that have colors and patterns, anything that I like I have forced myself to wear it because it’s who I am and I can express myself. It has taken me awhile to realize that it’s okay to be yourself and express who you truly

I always find myself questioning if a person’s actions are pure or deceitful. Since this incident, I have always questioned other people’s intentions, not necessarily on purpose, but self-consciously as a way to protect myself. Therefore, it’s difficult for me to get close to others. This is because I believe, if I couldn’t trust one of the closest people in my life, then how could I trust a complete stranger. In fact, I only have a couple of people in my life, other than my family, that I trust more than others. Provided that there are people I trust more than most, they still don’t have my complete

When you acknowledge fear and learn how to control it, then you've taken the first step to unlocking your true potential.

Through challenging myself to face my fears, I am discovering that there is no ceilings to my capabilities and what I am able to accomplish. Living in an abusive environment challenged me to strive to overcome my fear of public speaking and actively engage in acting and theatre productions that would support at risk youth. My pursuit of education has been a winding road that has zig zagged off the main highway into wooded forests. In the trying years of my youth, I have experienced failure in my academic pursuits, as the effects of my past affected my health and my ability to be a student. Learning to rebound from failure has been the most invaluable lesson I have learned from pursuing my dreams. When I failed, each failure was an opportunity for me to regroup, reassess and learn how to strategize for success; I learned to get back up time and time again and persist in the pursuit of my dreams with a different strategy, a different game plan. I believe that science and innovation have the power to change and heal the world. Great things in life never come easily. Scientific experiments lead to great discoveries that would otherwise never have been invented without failed experiments. It took a thousand failed experiments for Thomas Edison to discover the invention of the electrical light bulb. Without exploration and play, there would be no discovery, no invention. Failure is part of the learning process. Each time that I have fallen, I have learned from my failures and have come back stronger and better. Being a survivor of abuse, has given me the courage and strength to pursue my education despite health, personal and financial

It’s Tuesday morning. It’s the end of summer. It’s the start of school. Ugh, i don't want to get up. The clock said 7:20 i should of woke up at 7:00. I forced myself to get out of bed and went to get ready. What should i wear? Is this too much black? No white, I’m clumsy. Is pink too girly? If i wear wings will it be too try-hard? Straight hair or curly? I put on some jeans and a graphic t-shirt. Then grabbed a waffle and went to the bus stop. The bus comes at 8:01 so i walked all the way up the hill at 7:56. A few minutes later this blonde chick appears at the top of the hill. Nike shorts, nike shoes, Rock Bridge shirt, ponytail, so she’s sporty. She stands two feet away and doesn’t even say hi. Okay so she doesn’t seem friendly. Let’s not talk or look at her. It’s now 8:10 and the bus still isn’t here. My phone is at 75% should i go home really quick and grab my charger? Knowing my luck if I walk away the bus will come. It’s still summer vacation in Danville so there’s no one to text. After standing in front of a stop sign for twenty five minutes the bus finally comes.

Maybe I have finally felt positive about myself speaking in front of others but what also scares me is not getting accepted after all the time it took me to just get out of my chair. It would be lovely to be admired by my ideas and opinions and not get rejected .But there is always that fear that never leaves me alone in which I cannot explain or blame because it is not known and I cannot predict the outcome or what is expected after my actions. That unknown fear if I will score the winning goal at my soccer game seconds before it ends, not being able to predict if I will get to college safe from my house and on time to class. That horrible feeling I have after submitting a quiz and not being sure if I passed or

The purpose of this video essay is to give a stirring reminder that healthy growth occurs slowly over time. It is important not to rush, but to take the time to do each task before us right the first time, slowly and deliberately. The illustration is made of the space shuttle being loaded with the potential energy of rocket fuel, poised to achieve escape velocity. The important thing to remember is that space is not achieved in an instant, but in the powerful slow burn of the fuel accelerating the shuttle and launch craft from the takeoff point and away from Earth into the atmosphere.

“Trust: belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc.” (Merriam- Webster Dictionary). Distrust in a relationship occurs when the trust between two people is diminished. Distrust can have many negative affects on a person including: trust issues, anxiety, suspicion, fear of opening up, etc. Symptoms of distrust can depend on the severity of the distrust in the

When I was a child, I used to think that the idea of space travel was out of this world, some parts of myself still do. I’ve always believed that astronauts had a job more fascinating than anyone else, to have the luxury of being a part of one of the most spectacular feats in the world. It was a luxury not just given to them, but obtained through years of exhausting, strenuous work. I’m very proud, to this day, to be a citizen of the country that put the first footprint on the moon. Margaret Lazarus Dean, author of Leaving Orbit, and a NASA junkie, does an excellent job at opening the eyes of her readers to show the long hours, days, and years put into American space flight. After reading the book, the stories and experiences shared have helped me to more suitably understand the substantial accomplishment American spaceflight has made.

Life is full of disappointments. Sometimes some are small in nature, and sometimes some are big. However, at some points, people get over it, but sometimes they don’t. Moving from our past experiences is not easy; it’s very tough. Somehow these experiences build our personality. We started to becoming so much protected. We afraid to feel new experiences, however, at some point, we need to decide, whether our wish is to control by our past, or we want to build our

When you are too scared of going beyond what you are used to, you just have no choice but keep on living the way you've always been. Unless you initiate change, then you remain stagnant. It's the wayward concept of one's "comfort zone" - a place where you keep on doing what you've always done, being what you've always been, and making do with what you have, instead of striving to achieve more.