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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-23
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHxMq3wtrc
tell your story scenes that calm organized by students headaches youth and as did see it's after school I'm sitting at my desk and you wouldn't know it there's an action movie going on in my head my mind is racing and the gears in our spinning so fast it almost feels like they're on overdrive it's pretty chaotic and though my thoughts seem all over the place each
and every one of them is focused on one thing fear had and I can feel my heart beating loudly in my chest I can hear my uneven breathing and I noticed that my hands are mindlessly ripping a piece of paper I hate these feelings but I can't get away from them because fear is just too strong and I am already really tired since the beginning of
eighth grade I was wasting life being afraid of the things that could happen in it I was afraid of not being up to people's expectations and I wanted so much to please everyone else that I became overwhelmed with the belief that I was inadequate I told myself I'm not good enough for my parents for my teachers for my friends and for the people I haven't even
met yet the will meet I was afraid of my grades dropping in falling behind others and I forgot that life is not a race and I didn't want to try new things because I was afraid of failure that again could follow fear found a place in me and like the magnet that is it brought more motions of sadness anger and jealousy for quite a while it
was like life is flashing a Billboard that just said fear fear fear and it was exhausting to have to keep worrying about everything that could go wrong so I decided to do something about it that day after I managed to calm myself enough I looked down at my hands and found that I had been ripping papers and I began to wonder about how flimsy paper is
and how easily it could be torn apart when I was done there was just one tiny piece after in the palm of my hand that could easily hold in my fist and that's when it came to me fear was just like this piece of paper and that it can be torn apart it's quite the revelation right actually wrong it's a pretty simple fear can only be
as powerful as we let it be at that moment I decided to tear the paper for everything I was afraid of I was scared of people judging me after tearing the paper I found that do I do care what people think of me and and this life is mine and what I decide to do with it will bring it to where it will be what others
think of me in my decisions will be secondary to what I believe about myself and my decisions I was afraid of my grades dropping in falling behind others but I tore the paper and I know now that though grades are important it is even more important to me that I am trying my best working hard and staying healthy I refuse to allow letters control or define
me and yes I was afraid of falling behind others I tore the paper and I realized I can never be the best because there's always someone better and that is completely fine rather than being jealous of others all the time I want to focus on bettering myself and doing the best I can learning from what I do right and especially what I do wrong because we
know there feel like it does and though I was afraid of failure I am not afraid of feeling anymore because I tore the paper and I realize that if I never try I will never know if success is waiting for me and if I do fail that will just be one more thing for me to work harder at one thing for me to let go now
all this is great but what strikes me most when I look back is that it was a change in perspective that allowed me to stop being afraid nothing more all it took for me to regain control of life was taking a step back and looking at problems through a different lands every day someone falls to the trap of fear and depression and every time that happens
the world loses one of its sparks I cannot count how many young adults I note that are truly undergoing these feelings but are many times overlooked we have become a society where we want to push ourselves to the maximum and perfection is our ultimate goal but because of this view we become afraid of failure and we become angry at ourselves when we do fail but how
are we to stop this the truth is I don't think anything can completely stop this trend but I do know that thinking of fear as a piece of paper has really helped me I know that if we can actually implement that idea little by little a world of positive emotions that fear has hidden away opens up to us I no longer feel so afraid that I
