What scares the s* out of me is this: practicing & experimenting publicly.

Even writing these lines, knowing that some of my friends may soon read this and may judge it, makes me anxious. Even if I know that the reader’s judgement is the reader’s problem, not mine. It still makes me nervous. It still makes me think twice whether to continue this post and not to sit on the backspace throwing away this nonsense. I want to write down the final and best version of anything immediately and certainly I want to see the readers nodding during reading while sitting in an eternal awe.

Why is it happening all the time when trying something new in the public?

First I have to say I’m a seriously introverted guy, but it doesn’t fully explain why I’m struggling with learning in a spotlight. My best guess is that it all started somewhere around primary school. The system I grew up in did not reward any mistakes and being a consciencious little boy I think I started fearing mistakes very early in my life. I feared them so much that by the end of our precious school system I’ve become a perfection freak spiced up with a nice mistake-anxiety.

Well, the perfection thing is still on and I don’t want to fight that too much. But the mistake-anxiety is something I’ve been trying to erase for a while now. And it is very challenging to update a software that’s been running since your childhood. Making myself to write these lines and publish them is part of this practice. I’m trying to remind myself and my loved ones that doing things is the best way to move forward in learning. I just have to do what I’d love to and I just have to remember that everyone else started the same way in any other field. Just go, do it, watch yourself what happens, adjust, then repeat. Do, watch, adjust, repeat.

So what’s next?

I’m trying to apply this to everything. Today I used the same approach when I went to a skate park. Knowing that I’m not the first and the last who cannot skate too well, I’ve tried to forget that anyone is watching. Because it made me anxious. Whenever my mind drifted to the idea of someone watching I immediately broke my own flow and performed ten times worse. When I managed to say, f* it, I’ll just skate and watch my body – it was an amazing feeling. Even when I fell. Oh, yes, even then and I exactly knew that was part of plan. But learning to fall is another story. Let’s save it for next time!