“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
What is your worst fear? That is today’s question. I do believe everyone has fear no matter how amazing their life looks on the surface. Without exception, I of course have fears. Not one or two, but a lot. But once in a while, our fears give us some directions. Directions to be resourceful, successful, and creative even. And sometimes, fears define what we are capable of, instead of what we are not.
So, let me share my story of the last week and it was my own experience of overcoming one of my fears.
It was Monday. And our boss assigned my supervisor a shell scripting task, and he told my supervisor “You can re-assign it to someone else if you want.”
For those who don’t know what “shell scripting” is, it is a scripting program to be run on Unix/Linux shell. Even though there are various dialects of shell script, bash is probably most popular and is the de facto shell in major Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint. And it might be considered as a sort of programming language.
Okay, maybe this is a little too techy or nerdy, but please stay with me. As I mentioned above, this is more about how I overcame my fear than Linux shell scripting itself.
My supervisor, therefore, asked us in the online chat room if there was anyone who would like to challenge the shell scripting assignment. If you’ve been following my blog, probably you’d know I love Linux and so did my supervisor. Partially, he knew I’d like to do the task, and I personally thought he was challenging me.
Even though I love Linux and its open-source nature, I was scared. I was scared because I couldn’t trust myself fully. I love being challenged, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to embarrass myself by screwing it up. But. Yes, there was a big fat BUT. The last thing I wanted was a regret. Regret that I didn’t follow my heart. Regret that I didn’t even try. And regret that I haven’t done what I could have done when the chance presented itself.
“Sir, I want to do it. I love Linux.” Seriously, I really texted that on the chat thread. The moment I conjured up the courage to actually write that text, I felt I’d embarrass myself. But against my expectation, he simply wrote me back: “Okay, good luck with that, this task is yours now. Do you fully understand what are you going to do with it?”
That was the beginning. All I needed was a reason to challenge myself to discover what I’m actually capable of. For most of my entire career, I’ve almost always been waiting for an assignment to be given. But not this time. Despite my fear of scewing it up, I stepped out of my comfort zone. And I loved that feeling, it was as if I were jumping off from the cliff as the main stage in my life.
It took me almost three days to finish my assignment with a little help from my supervisor, but I finished it up. For the most part, I did it all by myself, and it was such a rewarding experience for my coding career.
So, as I mentioned above, all I want to share with you here is my life lesson; it’s waaaaay better to step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself than getting caught up in a regretting cycle. Even if you screw it up, that experience may keep shining in your heart and you are ought to do it better next time.
All in all, that’s this week’s story that I wanted to share with you. Also, this might be a little techy talk, but learning Linux command lines could be a great start to your IT career if you want to. That’s because that’s the way I started learning coding and Linux administration tasks.
But you don’t have to overwhelm yourself. Staring small is the key, and you’ll learn Linux’s open-source world step by step. And this idea could be relevant to anything in our lives, isn’t it? If there is a girl you would like to date with, ask her out (I know the current covid situation makes it a little difficult, though. But you can consider online dating lol). If you have a specific dream job you’d like to pursue, write down your action plan and do it! Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is yet to come. Today is your day!
Life is like a long marathon. There is no necessity to rush yourself. Take your own pace and do not let your pressure take over…
Oh… and the next post will be the 200th post, and it’s going to be a special edition. You’re going to love it! See you next week!
