Written on a train back from budapest 08.06

Inspired by Ben Horowitz story of how he met his best friend.

The other side of fear. As a kid, I’ve always been the shy kid, too afraid to say goodbye to my mom in kindergarten. Cried when I saw my brother go in the restroom but didn’t see him come out. In first grade, the first non A grade I got was a 2 out of 5 for participation with my teacher writing too shy beside it. In elementary I was always the angel child, the teachers pet, well I never had problems finding some best friends, I never did anything that was not compliant to the rules, anything that was new, anything that seemed fearful. It wasn’t until two things that made me change. The first was a ted talk on comfort zone challenges, the second was GaryVee.

During high school I would go on to do all sorts of crazy things. Lying on the ground on the sidewalk, dancing baby shark on the escalator in a huge department store, meditating on the bus floor, playing shines chess with the elderly in the park, talk to 50 strangers to ask for directions or the time, hitchhiking in Taiwan with 15 dollars.

Gary’s advice to reach out to anyone online also fostered my habit of always following up with friends I made. It is then that I connected with my best friends Felix, Janice, Felix, Greg, and Caillou, met people that led me to hold a Tedx event, working with the Taiwanese government, and got my first internships.

This taught me the power of proactiveness and collaboration. And whenever I feel fear, 90 percent of the time, it’s neither life threatening or detrimental to myself in anyway. More often than not there’s something beautiful waiting on the other side of fear. A friend, an experience, an opportunity, a life changing moment, or even when it didn’t work out entirely, a great growth opportunity to not be phased by rejection.

It is unnatural for us to do fearful things, it is against our nature and our instincts of the hunter gatherer to do things that might lead to social rejection, to not care about norms and what people think of you, or how you might look. But in this modern word, this fear is often what stops people from getting what they want.