Feel the fear and do it anyway?

This is probably going to be a long post, as well as a difficult post to write - but it's picture heavy, if that's any consolation. I don't really have many (any?) readers that this will matter too haha, but that might change one day??

There are two mottos I try to live my life by:

1) Feel the fear and do it anyway.

2) Try everything once, twice to make sure.

So the reason behind these two stem from my High School days... where I suffered from severe social anxiety disorder. Now, I do still suffer from it, but I can FUNCTION. Yep. Part of it means I'm always trying to hide who I really am, for fear people won't like me and will reject me. This means:

• I don't let on my opinions about things very often.
• I "agree" with people so to not cause conflict.
• People never really get to know me easily, so while I can make acquaintances very easily, I struggle A LOT going from the acquaintance stage to the friend stage.
• I have never, ever, in my entire life, organised a social outing, party or event - for fear nobody will come, people will say no, etc.
• People often say I'm a "mystery", and while sometimes that can be a good thing, how can anyone ever get close to me when they don't really know me?
• I struggle with eye contact, and feel really uncomfortable.
• I stutter, stumble my words, talk too fast so they all get muddled, and it makes me sound ridiculously dumb.
• Being the centre of attention is my idea of hell.
• Someone watching me do something makes me extremely uncomfortable.
• People in authority make me nervous, and I have an inferiority complex around them - this is kind of the same with people who I think are "better" than me.

And some of the things which used to plague me which I can now handle?

• Just getting up every day to go to school, especially if my one friend was not going - in which case I would hide in the toilets at recess and lunch.
• Oral presentations. I would rather have failed than do them - and did.
• Meeting new people.
• Parties.
• Speaking up in class (although I do get very red)
• Making phone calls
• Small talk

So I have changed a lot... this is due to the fact that I am constantly trying to fight my way out of my comfort zone, constantly trying to face the fear and do it anyway. But I just can't seem to get to the point of what I'd consider normal yet. I guess that's why I'm writing this... sometimes when I write things all out, it makes it seem clearer. At the risk of turning my blog into some kind of journal or diary, I will stop there and live by a motto by facing a fear right now (posting photos of me on my blog). This scares me because I don't want anyone I know in *real life* to find this.

So, here's to opening up about myself... which really freaks me out :(

FACING MY FEARS.............

I like to travel, mostly by myself. Here's me in Vietnam this year on a motorbike ride. (If you go to Vietnam, just try to NOT get on a bike... they hassle you on every corner ;))

This is in New Zealand, where I went hiking on a glacier. That's another thing about me - I love adrenalin (Part of facing the fear!)

In Europe - The Louvre.

In Kuala Lumpur.

Black Water Rafting in New Zealand.

Bungee Jumping in New Zealand.

Zorbing in New Zealand (Going down a big hill in a plastic ball filled with water)

Sand dune-ing?

Europe

Dune buggy-ing

Kickboxing. This is the first thing I did to face the fear when I first saw a therapist in school. She asked me what things I wanted to do but fear was stopping me, and kickboxing was one thing. I started that year and have done it off and on since.

Skydiving. I've since done in 560 times... I don't like to tell people about it because it embarrasses me when they're impressed (???)

Bushwalking. Something I try to do at least one or two times every winter.

The last couple of days I've been in a huge funk. So I went for a long walk to think about things, and as I was thinking about them this was something I thought of - stop hiding who I really am. So I thought I'd begin that by making a blog entry with pictures of me and some of the things I do, and some things about me... it doesn't matter that not many people read this, it doesn't matter that nobody I actually know in person reads this, it's still a step....

Here's a happy picture of me just to make things a little more positive ;P