Miscellaneous Monday: Overcoming Fears

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Happy Monday, Atlassian Community! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Why are they always too short 😉 ?

Today, I’d love to hear from all you brave folks about the last time you overcame a fear.

It could be anything from giving a talk, touching an insect, or skydiving. If it’s something you were afraid of and you did it anyway, I want to hear about it! Bonus points if you share how you felt afterwards.

Currently, I’m going through open water scuba dive training, which is a bit of a stretch for me. I’m totally cool with the water if I’m at the surface, but breathing through a regulator on the dark bottom freaks me out. But, I’m doing it anyway!

How about you? What fear(s) have you recently overcome or are currently overcoming?

 

Have an incredible week! 🤩

[John Funk]

Interesting topic @Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_ !

One for me is being afraid of heights. And, no, I am not jumping out of a perfectly good airplane anytime soon! Ironically, I love to go to the top of tall buildings - the views are fantastic! But that first step to the window or to the railing if it is open air, can be quite a leap for me. (pardon the pun  :-)

The most recent has been the Burj Khalifa here in Dubai. We went up to the 148th floor. It tops out at 154 for visitors, but it's just too expensive to do that. But for some reason, though that's the highest I have ever been in a building, it didn't have that scary feel to it at all. Being in the Sky Bridge on the Kingdom Tower in Riyadh was much worse at a mere 99 floors. 

[Ananjan_Mishra]

Hey @John Funk I recently visited the Burj Khalifa too, and it was amazing! Speaking of heights, I also checked out the Dubai Frame and walked over the glass floor, which is nearly 500 feet above the ground. Such a thrilling experience!

[John Funk]

That's fantastic @Ananjan_Mishra !! I still need to do the Dubai Frame - that might be next! Thanks for sharing!

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Wow, that's an amazing building @John Funk ! Thank you for sharing :)

[Stephen_Lugton]

This wasn’t necessarily the last time I overcame a fear, but it is one that I remember well.

On a road trip around North Island, New Zealand, we stayed for a couple of days at Lake Taupo.

On the first day I signed up for a skydiving experience! 

There were about 50 of us taken by coach out to an airfield where we were given safety briefings and dressed up in dull green overalls.  We then then split up into 13 groups to take turns going up and being thrown out of a perfectly serviceable airplane while attached to some experienced instructors.  I know it was 13 groups as I was in group 13, and we sat in the sun watching each of the other groups in turn load up into the plane and then small groups of parachutes come back down again one by one as the sun moved slowly across the sky bringing a few clouds with it.  By the time it was our turn there were lots of clouds moving quite fast across the sky, and it was at this time that the instructors turned round and told us that it was too windy for us to safely do a sky diving experience, so they loaded us back in our coach and off we went.

Since I hadn’t managed to go skydiving, I was at a bit of a loss at what to do since all the other day out experiences were still out, so I wandered along the river leading out of Lake Taupo until I found a small group of people queuing up on a platform out over the river with lots of ropes hanging from it.  It turns out these were bungee jumping ropes, so since I hadn’t been able to jump out of a plane, I decided to jump off the platform.

I joined the back of the queue and one by one the people in front had a bungee rope attached to their ankles and over the side they went.  When it came to my turn I had the bungee rope clipped to my ankles and shuffled to the edge.  It was at this point that my overwhelming fear of heights came into effect and my left hand reflexively clamped around the barrier fence.  The staff tried to calm me down but no matter what they said my left hand wasn’t convinced and wouldn’t let go.  In the end they said I didn’t have to go and I could come back off the edge and untie the bungee ropes, so my left hand unclamped itself from the barrier, and a pretty young woman pushed me off, so I went bungee jumping!

All I remember is terror, lots of terror as the river below got closer, and the next few seconds are a blur, but there is a video of me falling and bouncing back up again, unfortunately it’s on a VHS tape so I haven’t been able to view it for years.

This was one of my many attempt to get over the fear of heights; abseiling, where I giggled at the rest of my unit for about 3 minutes while leaning out at about 45 degrees from the vertical, but since I couldn’t get back upright I ended up going down the cliff, or climbing where I went back up the cliff I’d just abseiled down, or climbing trees, or going up tall buildings such as the Empire State and looking over the edge, or even better the Sky Tower in Shanghal with it’s glass floors, or climbing a scaffolding on the top of the chimney of a power station while carrying heavy equipment.

[Ananjan_Mishra]

@Stephen_Lugton Very well said! I can totally imagine what you were thinking at that moment. Now, I’m inspired to give it a try myself!

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Stephen_Lugton Was that young woman still there when the bungee jumping was done? I'm not sure if I would want to thank her or punch her! 😁

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@Stephen_Lugton that is a wild story haha! Thank you for sharing!

[Stephen_Lugton]

@Barbara Szczesniak I think she was one of the staff running the jump, but everything was so much of a blur on the way down that I forgot all about her, plus it was a New Zealand adventure activity and being pushed off things was fairly much expected 

[ABR]

@Stephen_Lugton That was wow!

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

I'm not fond of heights.  Since I keep falling off ladders over the last few weeks, it's the first thing that comes to mind.

[LoRi]

ladder heights are scarier to me than, bungee, skydive, or even cliff jumping.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

I hope you didn't get hurt, Shawn!

[Ananjan_Mishra]

@Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_ Great topic indeed!

Last year, I visited an 80-foot-deep waterfall. Since I don’t know how to swim, jumping in was definitely out of the question for me! But my friends kept insisting, and I finally took the plunge. Even though I had a life jacket, it was surreal. At first, I panicked, but eventually, I gained control. The fear isn't completely gone, but now I’m learning to swim. So yeah, that’s my story!

[Stephen_Lugton]

@Ananjan_Mishra  Congratulations on facing your fear, and on taking the next step of learning to swim!

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@Ananjan_Mishra well done! Thank you so much for sharing!

[ABR]

@Ananjan_Mishra So brave of you! Kudos on trying despite the fear!

[LoRi]

I have a fear of public speaking, so pretty much lots of regular occurrences at work or in life scare me. Once, I said yes to presenting at Career Day to a high school class. This was a double fear because I was thinking the kids would be especially a tough crowd (they sense fear right?) I did it because the teacher was a good friend and said he would be right there and though it was anxiety inducing, I noted that most of the kids seemed indifferent to me anyway. The best part was a nervous kid came up at the end to ask more questions and then the one-on-one made the whole experience worth it.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@LoRi thanks for sharing! I'm glad that in the end, the experience was well worth it :).

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I think the fear I overcame most recently was going to the grocery store in March 2020. I was not so afraid for myself, but afraid that I would bring covid home to my parents, who were in their late 70s at the time.

I think that was also what helped me overcome my fear though—that it was better that I went to the store than my parents. I didn't realize the constant stress I felt until I took them for their first covid vaccine and a great weight was lifted.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@Barbara Szczesniak I can definitely relate to this fear. Thanks for sharing!

[Vronik]

Hello everyone

Fear is not the word, but I achieved a milestone that I had been wanting to achieve for a long time and that was skydiving. I did it in the summer of last year and I can only say that it was an incredible experience, that I will repeat it without hesitation and I hope one day to be able to jump alone without a teacher...

Regards

[ABR]

Kudos to you, @Vronik !

[David Taylor]

Woooow!!!! This looks so much fun!! Wish I could do this. 

[ABR]

I have a deep Arachnophobia, which I've learnt to control to some extent since I became a mother. One day I returned from the market, to find a large poisonous spider on the floor, near my sleeping baby. There was no-one else at home that I could call to the rescue. I was paralyzed for a moment. Then I took a look at the baby, sleeping peacefully on her mosquito-net covered cot. She was safe for the moment.

Without taking my eyes of the creature, I managed the broom from the cupboard behind the door, holding it my left-hand and took off a flipflop from my right foot and held it in my right. Took a deep breath and pounced on the arachnid.

I had dispatched it with a single hit, but I still hit two more times just to be sure and then discarded the carcass onto the garden where it immediately became bird-food.

Since then I'm more in control of my phobia.

[Stephen_Lugton]

That reminds me of a not-fear related activity. 

During one of our university officer cadet training weekends we had some trainers from the SAS come in to show us survival skills, one of which was catching, preparing and cooking food.

One of the guys was given a chicken and a large stick and told use this to kill that, so he held down the chicken,  took the stick and swung it hard down on to the chicken's head.  Those of you who are familiar with chickens will know that they keep moving even after being hit hard on the head with a big stick, but he didn't know that so when the chicken kept moving he hit it again, and again, and again ...

Later that evening we had chicken off the bbq, and received the 'compliment' from the SAS of being the only unit they had ever visited that put up the beer tent before putting out sentries!

[David Taylor]

You are a great mom!!!