the idea that you've already said "no" to yourself if you decide not to ask. I'm much hampered by fear of rejection, and need to take that to heart.
I was always very shy, and that's something my dad would always tell me as he prodded me to "go ask already!"
Thinking on that, a corollary: something useful to me has been doing things that I wasn't initially comfortable doing, in order to stretch my comfort zone. I was always shy, and hated dealing with strangers, so the dog training was good in that it put me in contact with lots of strangers, and in fact I had to stand in front of a roomful of strangers and their barking dogs and actually have them all look at me as I demonstrated something. Now, talking in front of groups of strangers is no big deal. Mind, I still don't enjoy it, but I can do it.
Getting to the point of being able to do it was something I learned through dog training: you pair something you really, really like with something you don't enjoy--in such a way that, in order to get to the good stuff, you have to plow through the unpleasant stuff. For me, that meant getting to work with dogs was a reward for public speaking. Every time I talked to a stranger, I got to pet their doggie. I found out that "hey, this isn't so bad. I can do this!"
For you, I imagine, writing (and posting fanfic has been a way to stretch your comfort zone over your fear of rejection. Has it?
It might be fun to see if you can get a job(2) that will use a second set of your skills and that will stretch you a little bit. Make it challenging for yourself! I bet you can do lots of things really well.
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I was always very shy, and that's something my dad would always tell me as he prodded me to "go ask already!"
Thinking on that, a corollary: something useful to me has been doing things that I wasn't initially comfortable doing, in order to stretch my comfort zone. I was always shy, and hated dealing with strangers, so the dog training was good in that it put me in contact with lots of strangers, and in fact I had to stand in front of a roomful of strangers and their barking dogs and actually have them all look at me as I demonstrated something. Now, talking in front of groups of strangers is no big deal. Mind, I still don't enjoy it, but I can do it.
Getting to the point of being able to do it was something I learned through dog training: you pair something you really, really like with something you don't enjoy--in such a way that, in order to get to the good stuff, you have to plow through the unpleasant stuff. For me, that meant getting to work with dogs was a reward for public speaking. Every time I talked to a stranger, I got to pet their doggie. I found out that "hey, this isn't so bad. I can do this!"
For you, I imagine, writing (and posting fanfic has been a way to stretch your comfort zone over your fear of rejection. Has it?
It might be fun to see if you can get a job(2) that will use a second set of your skills and that will stretch you a little bit. Make it challenging for yourself! I bet you can do lots of things really well.