7 Tips to Overcome Your Fears and Achieve Your Dreams

In a room packed with about 300 women (maybe a guy or two), 75+ high school girls voluntarily got up to share their passions at the Massachusetts Conference for Women; everything from learning and science, to social injustice and event planning. I was in awe of how many voluntarily shared their passions with a room full of strangers, and wondered how many will go on to pursue these passions, not letting fear of failure or society’s notions hold them back.

“We have to overcome our fears in order to achieve our goals and dreams.”

A statement made by Lupita Nyong'o as she talked about coming to the realization that she wanted to do something “so impractical” such as acting. She went on to share 7 useful tips that helped her to overcome her fears...”slay her dragon.”

• Recognize and articulate your fears to yourself. We need to understand what our fears are in order to tackle them.
• Reach out to your stretcher-bearers. Having a strong support system (and PLN) is vital to one’s success.
• Ask questions of yourself. An important step in assessing our happiness, what we’ve accomplished, where we’re at and what we need to do to achieve our goal.
• Don’t underestimate the power of writing down your dreams and desires. It is amazing what writing down your dreams can do to help bring them to fruition.
• Breathe...meditate. Reflection and time to replenish your body and soul...a necessity in maintaining the strength to continue one’s journey.
• Go for it! Always allow failure to be an option. (I don’t think this can be iterated enough.)
• Step forward and repeat it all. It’s always hard when growing, but with each step it does become more familiar. If we are continuing to grow and learn, than there really is no end to this cycle. New discoveries, goals to reach, passions to follow.

I think it’s important that our children (students) not only hear us say they can achieve anything - but also that we provide them with mentors, role models, inspiration, support, assurance and examples, that it is ok to take risks, make mistakes and fail.

This conference happened to focus on women...but it is no doubt important for all regardless of age, gender or race. How do we recreate this positive and empowering energy for children every day, in our schools, homes and communities?