Throughout high school I was pretty shy. And ‘pretty shy’ is a huge understatement.
Of course, I wanted to change that. However, sometimes the conditions just aren’t right for you to change yourself even though you really want to. Even though I wanted to change myself, I couldn’t. And the reason was simple, my environment was the same. There were the same people around me everyday. The same people who already had expectations of me and ‘knew’ how I behaved. The same people who would think it weird if I suddenly changed. The same people who wouldn’t let me change.
Mind you, these were good friends. But even good friends have expectations of who you are and how you’re supposed to behave. If you suddenly act all social where you used to be shy, they’ll start wondering what’s wrong with you, to the point where you’ll just turn back. The same goes for the reverse, if you act calm and collected where you used to be all loud, then again they’ll think there’s something wrong with you and slowly pressure you back into your old behaviour.
It’s just hard to change when everything around you doesn’t.
Changing my environment
Because of that, I had to forcibly change something. I needed a trigger, something to push me towards change. I needed to force myself into a corner and put myself in an environment where I **had **to change.
University life was my platform. But even though university was a change in environment, that wasn’t enough to make a change in me. I needed to force something. I did.
I joined the public speaking club, and trembled in front while I spoke for 2 minutes in front of 10 people. I joined the debate club, and trembled while I spoke for 7 minutes in front of 50 people. I joined theatre, and trembled while I spoke for 2 hours in front of 400 people.
I forced myself into those situations and signed up without giving myself a chance to back out, because I knew I was too scared to do it otherwise.
University life was my platform, but it could be something different for you.
But I’ve repeated this experiment a few times in different situations.
The last minute effect
Ever had an assignment or deadline that came closer and closer but OHMYGOD you still hadn’t done anything yet? Yeah, I think we all have. Ever felt yourself suddenly become uber productive and able to finish it at the last minute, right when the project is due tomorrow? You’ll work through the night and come up with work that’s not exactly amazing but acceptable. And you’ll wonder how you managed to do it, and you’ll think that if only you’d done it a bit earlier you would’ve done a much much better job.
This ‘last minute effect’ seems to show that when you’re forced into a corner, you’ll discover that you are much more capable than you thought you were. I believe that this is true for most things.
The simple truth is that:
You are more capable than you believe
It’s the mental blocks in our mind that limit us more than our inherent abilities or intellect. Most times, our survival instincts kick in, and we don’t go close to our limits because we’re afraid to fall over the edge. Mastery is merely the training you go through to find your limits so that you know exactly how far you can go without falling.
The person who hasn’t trained himself doesn’t know where his limits are. The fear of that unknown keeps him far far away from the edge and well within his comfort zone.
You are more capable than you believe
Even when you’re scared and believe that it’s impossible for you to do something (who would’ve thought that I could one day speak in front of 1000 people without breaking a sweat when I once couldn’t speak in front of 10 people!), it’s sometimes more a case of how far can you push yourself.
And sometimes, the way to push yourself is to use what’s around you. To make sure that everything around you makes you do it.
I mean, I definitely can’t take the full credit for my own growth. I signed up for a public speaking class, then simply attended. It was the people in the class who forced me to go in front and speak. I forced myself into that corner, into an environment where I knew I had to speak even if I was scared. Even if I didn’t want to.
And that’s the problem. There are multiple versions of ourselves, and there was a version of me who wanted to able to speak well and a another version of me who thought that it was madness, and that I could live a very full life while pretending to be a mute. So I had to trap the other version of myself in an environment where I couldn’t escape speaking, so that I could train it and teach it that it is possible.
So I trapped myself into a corner to grow.
Some might call it weakness. Weak in discipline, weak in conviction. But truth be told, you can’t be strong in every aspect of your life. When you like something, it’s very easy to be disciplined about it. But there will be times in life when you hate something that’s necessary. I see this as knowing my limits. Knowing my weaknesses and working to overcome them.
Guess what? It’s ok to be weak. We’re human. We’re not perfect. But when the issue is an important one, would you be willing to force yourself into a corner to make sure it gets resolved?
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