We cannot become good at something by not doing it

Many of us harbor fear for many things in our personal and professional lives. Some of us fear public speaking, some about writing, some about expressing their opinions because they think they can't articulate their opinions properly or people will laugh at them, and some fear taking initiative. We can add many things to make this list more comprehensive but I think you got my point. Many of these fears are due to our failures when we tried some of those things for the first time; maybe our first presentation was a disaster, maybe when we tried to express our opinion people didn't understand it as there was no clarity, maybe some of us think that we cannot write. The problem with such fears is that we try our best to avoid doing the things that we think we are not good at. In spite of knowing that we might need those skills to progress professionally and personally, we try to avoid taking any steps to master those skills due to our fear. We somehow feel that one fine day suddenly we are going to get better and overcome those hurdles or somehow we can progress by avoiding them altogether, but this is just wishful thinking. We face many situations where we need to speak in front of the public or we are told to express our ideas. Due to a lack of preparation or a belief that we somehow could manage it, we flounder and are not happy with our performance. Such instances solidify our fears as we don't perform any better than our previous attempts as we never tried to fix the original problem problem. The only way to overcome our fears is to practice the skills that we lack or need to improve. There is no way to master anything without practicing it, we need to do the things regularly that we need to master. Regular practice is not necessary only in sports but in each and every skill which we want to master.

I suggest one approach to overcome such fears: make a list of things that you want to learn or improve, prioritize that list as per your need or preference, and then start acting on one item at a time. It is not advisable to start working on each and every item from the list at the same time unless you have enough stamina and time to devote to each of them. Choose the platform and community where you are most comfortable, this is very important as you will need a very encouraging atmosphere at least in the beginning. The journey of personal development is not easy, it requires a hard push as well as a cushion of support. If you have some other responsibilities, like work or study, it is advisable to practice at your own comfort level so that you can handle everything without getting overwhelmed. The journey should be fun and challenging at the same time. It should not be burdensome and affect other parts of your life negatively. Of course, this approach will require an honest effort and sincere commitment from our side, it will test our patience as there will be many challenges and failures, but remember persistence helps and there are no shortcuts to achieving amazing things. If you want to improve on something start working on it, this is the only way to improve. We cannot become good at something by not doing it. All the very best.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.