Get Over Yourself
“Get over yourself,” has been one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received. Despite being told this multiple times throughout my childhood, often during a tantrum, this bit of wisdom never resonated with me until I was in high school.
Fear At It's Finest
Fortunately, I had a very wise choir teacher who taught not only music, but life lessons along with it. Although his class was fantastic in nearly every way, he always had one daunting assignment at the end of the school year that shook every one of us insecure and immature teenagers to the core. That heavily-weighted assignment was for each student to sing a solo in front of the entire class.
I’ve often heard that most people are more afraid of death than they are of public speaking, let alone public SINGING. As he was rattling off details of the assignment to the class, he looked at all of us, and rather aggressively proclaimed for us to, “GET OVER YOURSELVES.” Sounds harsh, but it was tough love that we all needed to hear and benefit from.
The Result
To conclude this story, I did indeed sing the heck out of my solo in front of the class. I sat back down in my chair trembling from nerves and fighting back tears from the intense emotional rollercoaster of fear, pride, and everything in between. That has been and remains to be a monumental moment in my life. The pride my teacher had in me, and the confidence and trust I gained for myself having overcome that “obstacle” (and to have done it well) will always be a core memory for me. How did I do it? I got over myself.
What Are We SO Afraid Of?
What is it that you are so terrified of doing? Why are we so afraid of failure? What is so awful about doing something that takes effort and discipline? What keeps you from reaching your goals?
Get ready… I’m going to talk about feelings again.
We are so afraid of failure, that we often don’t even start. That’s pathetic, truly. We are so capable of achieving greatness, and with internet access, we can learn how to do almost anything even if we don’t know how or happen to mess it up the few times we try. Not to mention, failing is a big part of life. Which means if we are afraid of it, we’ll be spending a lot of time running, shrinking, and avoiding success. I think rather than avoiding failure, we need to put an effort in getting comfortable with it. The only way to get comfortable with failure is to allow yourself the potential to fail.
To Avoid Failure Means To Avoid Successs
What if I failed that solo? What if I let stage fright get the best of me, I choke up and cry? Or maybe I sing, but I sing so awful that the class laughs and talks about it for the next 2 weeks?
Well, then I have to face some unpleasant emotions like defeat, anxiety, embarrassment, or possibly even anger. I don’t like those emotions. I’d rather not have them, but having those emotions is the worst that can happen.
Not meeting my goals and failing is a blow for sure, but I can handle that. I can manage unpleasant emotions, because as I’ve said before, emotions are just vibrations in the body. I can deal with a vibration, and so can you.
The WORST That Can Happen
Basically what I’m saying is this: the worst that can happen if you fail is you feel “bad” or uncomfortable. That for me is such a relief, because feelings can’t hurt us and don’t have the power to drive our responses unless we allow it. You can have a sense of peace and freedom to challenge yourself and do hard things when you know the very worst that can happen is you feel uncomfortable. If you fail, you then have the option to learn from it and either give up, try something new, or try again. As people with free will, the options hereafter are truly endless.
The worst thing that can happen if you don’t even try, is you miss the opportunity to ever achieve what you want in life. You do a disservice to yourself and everyone around you by not offering the best you can be and do with the time you have on Earth. You reach the end of your life and regret the moments you missed, the opportunities you didn’t take and the adventures you didn’t go on because you were scared of how you will feel if it doesn’t work out or of what people might think (and let their thoughts determine how you feel about yourself.)
You MUST be diligent and disciplined in creating and meeting your goals, because that’s how you become the best, happiest, and most loving person you can be. When you hit the roadblock of self-doubt, insecurity, or fear of failure, ask yourself, “What am I really afraid of?” When you boil it down to simply feeling bad, remind yourself that you CAN handle hard or unpleasant feelings. Is the possibility of feeling “bad” worth tossing your life’s dreams to the side? No way, José!
Insecurity
I think a lot of us have adapted the idea that if people like us and approve of our actions, that means we are “good”. If people don’t like us, or deem our actions as unacceptable, we are “bad”. Our security is found in the approval of others.
Although there is a place for labeling behaviors and actions as morally wrong, letting them define you will lead you down a rocky road, because none of us are perfect. Additionally, people are subjective. In the same interaction with two other people, one might think you are amazing and want to be your best friend, and the other might prefer to never talk to you again.
Therefore, if our security comes from the approval of others, we will always be insecure. This includes ourselves as well, just as much as other people are subjective to changing opinions and thoughts, you are just as apt to do that to yourself. Think about times when you have thought very highly of yourself. In the same train of thought you can think about times you felt very low of yourself. Did your worth as a person change from one moment to the next? I would argue it did not. So, basing your self-worth off what you think of yourself is just as unstable and unreliable.
Some people are such great people-pleasers that they become “over-confident” and egotistical. I would argue that both the under confident and overconfident person is an insecure person, because neither party has a grounded identity. I will also make the bold statement and say that these qualities are both selfish, and being insecure is just as selfish as being egotistical.
It is selfish to allow other people to determine your value, because if they deem it to be of low worth, you will put-out low quality work. You’ve heard the saying, “You are what you say you are.” If others say you are lazy, unlikable, or do poor work, and your opinion of yourself is derived from their opinion of you, you claim those qualities as your own. You take their thought, make it mean it’s who you are and put that out into the world. If you are in this camp, you don’t have to be stuck here.
You Are Worth It
We need to start by erasing the idea in our minds that our and other people’s thoughts about us have anything to do with our value. Even the thoughts your spouse has about you has no effect on your worth, despite how heavily weighted their opinions of us our weighted in our minds.
Our worth does not come from an unreliable or unstable force, rather from God who stays the same now until forever. This is where we can find true security and an anchor for the foundation of our value, and I’ll tell you now, the value he places over us is pretty significant. (And that’s an understatement.)
God sent his one and only Son down to die for you to be saved.
That is a REALLY big deal. That is the ultimate sacrifice, and He did that for YOU. He did that for you, because you were worth it. You ARE worth it to Him. I don’t want to skim over this, because this is a huge breakthrough when you allow this to sink in and realize how powerful that is, but I did write a whole post on this concept of being worthy here: “Am I Enough?” It’s worth checking out if you haven’t read it yet.
The BEST That Can Happen
The best that can happen when you get over yourself is you will get the opportunity to live the life you want; a full, genuine, and authentic life. You can take the risk in starting your own company. You can write your first blog. You can lose the weight, or gain more muscle. You can foster or adopt children. You can be the happiest version of you. You can be the most loving wife. You can build the house. You can potty train your 2.5 year old. You can do THE THING you’ve been wanting to do for long, but have been held back by YOUR OWN SELF.
Achieve Greatness
It’s natural to feel self-doubt when looking up at the high standards and goals you set for yourself. I want to encourage you to not be discouraged by that; it just means you are setting great goals for yourself. When you are faced with a goal that is intimidating and that will require you to stretch outside of what you think might be possible, that’s when you know you are on the right path.
I want to remind you that you are strong. You have valuable gifts to share with the world. You are enough. Your life is worth living to its fullest potential.
You can handle the roadblocks, setbacks, discomforts, and failures that accompany you on your journey to achieving and experiencing amazing things in life. This is your life, and you can live it however you want to; the only person in your way of achieving greatness is you. Moreover, you are also the most equipped and suitable person to live this exact life at this very moment of time.
Give yourself room to fail, suffer, and be miserable. Get over your fear of being hurt and feeling unpleasant emotions. Get over your excuses. Get over your insecurity. Get over yourself, and fiercely flourish. 💛
Did You Know?
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