Confront Your Fear by Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone“The fear of change or changing things is called Metathesiophobia; meaning fear of moving, change”

It would take everything I had inside to confront my fear and smash my comfort zone to experience something new, something fun and exciting. It all started when my daughter asked me to join her in taking a pottery class. If you know me at all, you know I’m not creative in the physical sense.

You see, I’m what you might call a workaholic. At a very young age, I started working in my grandparent’s vineyard. Never using my young imagination to go somewhere fun in my mind. Learning to use work and its results as a way to gain approval would not prove beneficial. Fear was a sort of tool, like a water gauge, only this approval or disapproval gauged success or failure.

I shared my fear about how it felt going to my first pottery class on a Facebook Live (click the orange link to watch). A fish out of water would feel more comfortable than I did at that moment. Other classmates “looked” like creative, artistic people; me? A bookworm wiggling to dig deep inside of a book described me. Instead of dirtying my hands with that brownish, dirt they call clay I would rather have been at home working on my laptop, right inside my comfort zone.

Then there were the tools that potters use; the potter’s wheel, the potter’s wheel peddle and the clay and water. Listening intently, I didn’t want to miss one word of teaching nor take my eyes off of the skilled instructor. I did learn so much about the history of throwing clay; where clay comes from, how the process of morphing clay into stoneware and ceramics happens. It was all very interesting.

Yet, in the pit of my stomach, my old enemy “fear” was creeping back in, crawling up my spine leaving a lump in my throat. My mind whirled as I took hold of the first lump of moist, hard clay. I heard it whispering “you can’t do this, this is not what you are good at, go home…quit now”.

By the end of the night, I was beyond frustrated and felt defeated. I didn’t have what it took to do this, I knew it like I knew the back of my hands. However, with the encouragement of my daughter and the rest of the class, I didn’t quit.

I learned a lot about me that night. I learned that even this fiery grandma can learn from her daughter, a little 7-year-old girl and my own honed skill of seeing the positive in any situation. I learned that that lump of clay could be likened to my blog when I didn’t know what a blog was. The wheel was like the articles I needed to learn to put on paper and share. The pressure applied to the wheel was likened to the various classes and coaches I learned from; depending on the amount of pressure applied equaled the speed at which my business would grow.

The point of sharing this story is this: we all have to start somewhere. Fear is real, it can paralyze us into doing nothing. When we do nothing, fear wins. However, when we confront our fear we can smash our comfort zone and come out on top, the winner.

 

Carla J Gardiner, The Fiery Grandma

 

Carla Gardiner is a mom of 2, the fiery grandma of 7 and married to her husband for 38 years. She is focused, and driven; a business owner who made a big move in her late 50’s which rocked her world. Transitioning from her native hometown to her new home 3 states away took guts, work, and dedication to get the job done. Now, she is focused on helping other women handle life’s changes after 50 while making the transition to their retirement lifestyle; one they’ve been dreaming of instead of the nightmare it could become.


P.S.  Before you go I have a question for you. Are we connected on Facebook? Each week we get together and I share on Facebook Live a lifestyle tip, a business tip, or even something fun to mix it up and keep life interesting. Join us, we are one wild bunch of women over 50. Click here to go to my Facebook Page.