“Out of vulnerability comes progress.”

If don’t do things out of your comfort zone you’ll always stay where you are. If you want something you’ve never had you’ve got to do something you’ve never done. If you have no goals you’re actively working towards you’ve become complacent. Complacency should be your biggest fear. Yes you’re scared and so am I, but what you have to gain is much larger than what you have to lose.

The rewards from living with this mentality are more than just physical (or in my case school accolades, etc.) ; they’re mental. Your confidence grows as you begin jumping over obstacles and looking at future challenges with a winning mentality. You shy away at first in fear of failure but remember all those times you’d felt that way before and laugh. Don’t become a big fish in a small pond, realize that there are oceans out there where you just don’t swim fast enough, waiting to be conquered. Going to a school where I became top 1% of my class I had to learn this through the college application process. And I had to internalize it when I didn’t get enough scholarships at places where I’d ran around the whole house screaming after getting my acceptance letters, and therefore had to turn them down.

They say experience equals wisdom and after many years of cautiously trying to learn through others, I’ve come to realize the truthfulness behind it. You never take an old adage to heart until it beats you down for blowing it off.

Frankly, I’ve probably had a ton of learning experiences but they’re so suppressed in the back of my adolescence archive that I’m numb to them. So here comes a generalization (at the fear of sounding like a new-age motivational guru scam artist):

My advice to everyone is: push yourself to the limit, because only then will you be able to grow and expand outside of your current abilities. If not then are working under your potential and not maximizing your intelligence at an optimal output.  Don’t fear being vulnerable, fear being complacent.