One of the biggest challenges I've had to face was getting out of my head. I have always been a big dreamer and lived in make-believe worlds crafted in my imagination. In my late teens, I had my future mapped out, complete with a 10-year plan of what I was going to do, where I was going to go, and all the places I was going to see.
After I finished school, I joined the OVC and planned to go to the UK for two years to work and travel. Two weeks before I was supposed to depart, the exchange rates crashed, and the amount of money I was required to have in my bank account doubled. Instead, I decided to use part of my savings to study tourism management and save up to go to the US as an au pair. I joined a local crèche as a volunteer to learn to work with children and, at the same time, started waiting tables at a Spur Steak Ranch restaurant. Both lasted a month.
I was terrified of children! I quickly made my peace with the fact that au pairing was not going to be in my future. Unfortunately, I was terrified of people too. After a month, on my last shift, the restaurant manager called me in and suggested I try a different line of work because the customers were complaining about me. Not because I gave bad service, but because it looked like I was going to faint whenever they talked to me! So, I quit.
I spent the next few weeks in my room, lost in my imagination, dreaming of all I was going to do and the places I was going to see until I realized that none of that was ever going to happen unless I left my room. I suddenly became determined to achieve my dreams and decided that I was going to conquer my fears by going out and deliberately facing each one of them.
For the next five months, I volunteered at another crèche from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., and from 5 p.m. until 11 p.m., I waited tables at a Saddles restaurant. I quickly learned how to work with children and overcame my fear of them, but the restaurant was another story. I was a terrible waitress. During my first shift out of training, I mistakenly ordered a chickenburger instead of a cheeseburger and suggested to the customer that she should rather have the chickenburger! I got into trouble, and although only my manager and the owner knew of my mistake, it felt as if everybody knew and was laughing at me. The walls were closing in on me and had eyes, watching my every move. I decided then and there that I was never coming back!
That evening, while having my staff meal, I had a stern self-talk and convinced myself that I was not going to go through life running away from every challenge. I gave myself permission to fail and to make mistakes and challenged myself to learn from them and use those failures and mistakes to become the best I could be at whatever I take on. I came back the next day, and the next, and the next...
After changing my mindset, I started observing people from a distance. I watched the top waiters, how they acted, how they talked, what they said, and then I started mimicking them. Soon, I became a decent waitress and ironically had to be cautioned a few times not to socialize with the customers. Truth be told, I was not socializing. I was being a fountain of information, telling the tourists about all the attractions and activities in the area. I was studying tourism management, after all.
I did not overcome my social anxiety and fear of people. I just learned to mask it. It is a bit like acting, where you create a role-based persona. Each day when I left my room, I would step into that persona and be that persona. When I came home at night, I would step out of that persona and be left with all my anxious thoughts, which would haunt me and repeatedly play back my day. I would anxiously wonder if I did something wrong, said something wrong, or perhaps talked too much. And if I did make mistakes, I would replay them over and over in my head, beating myself up over things that no one else even remembered or thought about! Social anxiety is no joke for those of us who live with it. But every day, I stepped back into a persona and did it all over again.
Until it became second nature.