If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
Yesterday I went to this workshop I needed to go to start my internship, it was meant for professional developers to learn them about this great new idea that is supposed to take the world in a few years. I was really excited for this workshop to learn about this idea and to work with is, but I was also terrified. This workshop was meant for people that had way more experience than me, that are supposed to know way more than me. I am just a student, what I am supposed to do to there?
This is a strange fear I have and a lot of other people also have, to look stupid in front of others. It is a strange fear because everybody has to start somewhere.
I find myself a lot of times struggling to do something or start something, just because I am afraid to fail and to fail in front of others it feels vulnerable. This fear is more intense if you go somewhere where everybody is better in the things you are doing but isn’t that strange? Those people went trough the same process of failing and trying again. They know how it was and they won’t judge you if you go to the same struggle.
It would be very hypocritical for them to judge, but still, I am always afraid. I know that there are some twats that are judging that forgot how hard it was for themselves, so I shouldn’t even care about theirs.
I really want to overcome this fear this year, so I try to push myself in new situations. In the Netherlands, we have a saying “met je billen bloot”, it roughly translates to “with your bottom naked” and means to be vulnerable. It is just like that, when you start something new you don’t have something to hide behind, it is just like being naked.
So I went to that workshop met mijn billen bloot I was so scared that everybody was like “What are you doing here?”, but that didn’t happen. I followed the workshop learned a tonne and now I am ready to begin my internship.
After The Reveal 