Facing One's Fears
I have a contrary streak, one that intensifies when I fail at, or am intimidated by something. I often turn around and confront it directly, and while that trait doesn’t always end well, many times it has helped me to grow in ways that have enriched my life. As a toddler, I’m told that I once spent a potentially unhealthy amount of time face-down in a wading pool, an incident that no doubt contributed to my reluctance to let go of the edge of any swimming pool until I was eight or nine years old (luckily, I was not in fact injured). In high school, I stubbornly decided to overcome that lingering issue by joining the swimming team, eventually becoming co-captain.
I have been fascinated by airplanes and flight since my earliest days, but the first few times I was taken aloft, I got airsick. In my twenties, I set about earning my pilot’s license and subsequently spent hundreds of hours at the controls, thrilling to the sensation of being one with the wind.
The first time my 11-year-old self ever stood on a stage and faced an audience, with lights seeming to shine from every direction, I froze. I shuffled off the stage in abject humiliation, but in the decades since I have enjoyed a stage career that has been thrilling and fulfilling—once I learned how to channel that fear into creative energy. As a child of the 60’s and 70’s, I grew up at a time when, in some circles, “business” and unfettered capitalism were reviled. In my college studies I assiduously avoided anything to do with business and economics, and I still have some lingering issues with modern capitalism. When I bought Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton in 1986, though, it was the beginning of a journey that has led me to an understanding of how small, locally-owned businesses can help define a community in a positive way.
That it was a bookstore made it easier to accept that yes, now I was deeply into retail, almost as deeply as I was into debt, two things I had tried to avoid up to that point. Once again, I had to face something that I found alien and intimidating, but I applied myself to learning business skills, and succeeded beyond any reasonable expectations. (I ended up teaching basic business skills to other booksellers, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Small Business Development in Peru).
To be clear – I was never a standout swimmer, my flying skills fell far short of fighter-pilot level, no business school would ever use my management of Chapter One as a case study, and I’ll leave it to others to judge my performances on stage, but all have brought a richness and pleasure to my life that I might never have experienced had I not confronted those fears directly.
I have never felt that way about writing. I have always enjoyed it and, with few exceptions, have rarely felt any trepidation about sharing my work with others. I’ve been a freelance writer since 1979, including work as a newspaper journalist, which required submitting my work to an editor and then to the public, often on a deadline schedule that didn’t allow for agonizing over re-writes.
Now, as a writing coach, I draw on all those experiences, and honor the courage it takes for a student to share their work with me. With every student, I get to combine the pleasure that I take in writing, with the empathy that I feel for someone experiencing the potential anxiety of the coaching encounter, and I look on it as an opportunity for both of us to grow.
I know that my coaching skills have grown since my own anxiety-filled first student/coach encounters, but at this point in my life it’s not my own personal growth that keeps me coming back. What keeps me signing up is the knowledge that I may have helped someone confront what to them is a daunting task, and accompanied them for a time on their own road to mastery.
