What had me so afraid again?

You know those things you are so afraid of doing, only to do them and wonder why you were afraid in the first place? I experience this at least once a week. Yesterday it was meeting Harriet Minter, editor of the Guardian’s Women in Leadership section. I met Harriet last October at the orientation event for Chevening Scholars. She was one of the keynote speakers and made quite the impression on most of us. You can read about that here. After her talk, she gave us her Twitter handle and asked us to send her a message if we wanted to talk.

That evil voice of discouragement makes you more afraid

I remember being so excited about her invitation and making a note to send her a message. There is something about the first moments you get an idea. You are more optimistic and confident you will follow through with that idea. Then time passes and the ‘voice of reason’ sets in. That is what happened to me. The longer I put it off, the louder these voices got. They said things like, “she’s too busy”, “she was just being nice, in the same way people promise jobs to fresh graduates during celebrations”, “what you want to talk to her about is pure nonsense, don’t waste her time”. You get the drift. Soon, it was January and I hadn’t contacted her. Meanwhile, what I wanted to talk to her about festered.

Sadly, that is not the only thing I was putting off so there was a lot of psychological festering happening. It did not help that January was bluer this year than it has ever been in my life. I blame the weather for that part. Turns out all those children’s books which paint a sunny day as one of laughter and cheeriness are not kidding. What was I writing about? Oh yes! Letting things fester. Good thing is I came out of it with a lot of help [a link to a blog post I was supposed to write about how my mentor Dobriyana had advised me to beat the funk was supposed to go here. Turns out it’s one of the things that went unwritten]. A lot of that help came from talking to other people. Soon these people’s positive voices drowned out all the negativity. Thank God! I really cannot thrive on negative energy.The loudest thing all these people said was getting on with whatever I set my mind to doing. Immediately I say I’m going to do it –fears be damned. After one such talk , I promised to send a message to Harriet, even when that evil voice said I had put it off too long. She got back to me and we set up our meeting.

Following through is just as important as not being afraid

Sending the message and getting feedback from her was however not the end of that insecure voice. Even when I was sure about what I wanted to talk about, I still felt like it was too mundane to warrant Harriet taking time out of her schedule. Then there was the fear that I’d get there and become tongue-tied. Or that I would say all the wrong things. Given how talkative I am, the last one was a real possibility. But I had already scheduled the meeting, and I was going to stick to it no matter what. Even if I was so sick to my stomach with nervousness that I would not have been lying had I cancelled the meeting on account of an illness.

Then the meeting came and went so smoothly, I had to look at the selfie I took with Harriet to believe that it actually happened. I kid not. A lot of it had to do with how lovely Harriet is. I was about five minutes late on account of coming out of the wrong side of the tube station (yes, the tube still teases me) but that was not even an issue.

Note to self: Even 30 minutes is not enough ‘leg-room’ when you’re using a station for the first time.

Harriet put me right at ease immediately I got there. Our conversation even started without those uncomfortable icebreakers that punctuate conversations with people you have never met one-on-one. Not even the weather came up! And that is saying something since I could write a dissertation on UK weather. Even after talking about what we had met to talk about, it was easy to talk to her –I might have been in full talkative mode but let’s blame it on the coffee.

So what was I so afraid of? It turns out, being afraid was going to keep me from much needed advice, and the company of one of the warmest people I’ve met in the UK. Shaking in your boots about doing something that may seem too small or too big? Take a leap of faith and tell someone about it. Hopefully they will remind you of your little or big milestone the next time you are afraid.