Anxious to Be Me
Imagine you are sitting in your house and it's a beautiful night and everything looks perfect. You get up from where you are sitting and you are walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As you are walking, you suddenly feel light headed and dizzy. Your whole body starts feeling funny and you can't think straight. Out of nowhere, a flash of bright rainbow colours starts flashing from the corner of your eyes. Your heart is pounding heavily in a way you have never witnessed before. Not trying to over think it, you decide to sit down for a while hoping it is just a passing moment of temporary dizziness.
But things get worse very quickly, your chest is getting tighter and tighter, and you feel like you are forcing yourself to breathe. You start walking hysterically around the house to distract yourself from what you are feeling. As you are walking, your depth perception feels wrong and it's as if the floor is moving down and up for no reason. Your vision becomes increasingly distorted, foggy and blurred. You have tingling sensations all over your body and you are shaking, trembling and sweating. The only thing you can think of is “I am dying and I have to get to the hospital fast.”
That was me 15 years ago. I had no idea what was happening to me. I became paralyzed by fear. And all I could think of was, maybe this is how it feels when you are dying. But I was only 26, how could I be dying?
Within minutes of getting to the hospital, the nurses and the doctors could see I was in serious distress and they acted quickly. They tried talking to me, but I couldn’t speak clearly. My mouth was dry and my teeth were clenching so hard. Within seconds, I was lying on the hospital bed with all these scary and weird looking machines around me, veraciously staring at me as if they were saying goodbye.
After a while, one of the doctors came back in the room and he gently whispered “young man, you are not dying; you are just having an anxiety attack.” Anxiety what? I knew what the word anxiety means, but I had never heard the words anxiety and attack used in the same sentence. Usually, it’s heart attack. As you can imagine this gave me a huge relief, but also made me wonder why this was happening and why now and why me?
As I would find out over the weeks and months that followed, there are many reasons people experience anxiety attacks. As for me, I was a young leader and new to Canada. I had big goals for my career, but I didn’t know myself very well. I thought passion was enough to go through life in Canada and succeed as a young leader. I was wrong, very wrong. I discovered the hard way that you need strategy. I discovered you need to learn how to lead yourself first before you can lead anyone else. I am now a Willing Student and I teach others what I have learned and what I am still learning.
The anxiety attacks also exposed some of the underlying insecurities that I didn’t know where buried inside me. I was anxious to be me, but I didn’t have the guts to be me. I was too afraid to say what I believed, to be honest about how I felt and to go after what I wanted. Like most people I ended up overthinking everything and my body couldn’t handle the unrealistic levels of perfectionism that my mind was demanding. And the anxiety attacks were my body screaming “you need to stop thinking too much Tawanda and just be you.” Yeah right. How do you do that?
I was anxious to be me, but I didn’t have the mental and emotional strength to ask the right questions and begin the journey of self-discovery. I was anxious to be true to myself, but I didn’t have the patience to go through the process and uncover what most authentically lives within me. I was anxious to have a voice, but I wasn’t ready to deal with the vulnerabilities and rejections that are equally and rightfully so, part of the package. I was anxious to be me, but I was also running from me.
Being true to yourself as a young leader is like falling in love. You can’t fake it. You have to be vulnerable. There are no guarantees that the other person will love you back. Some people will love you back and some people will reject you. And that’s ok. As Garth Stein says in his book The Art of Racing in the Rain, “There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.”
I will be honest with you, I am still anxious to be me, but I now have more guts than I did 15 years ago. And what keeps me going when the anxiety creeps in are these words from Paul the Apostle “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
I need Jesus every day and I make my requests daily. Don’t get me wrong. I still have my passion. In fact, I am more passionate now than I have ever been my entire life. I am passionate about helping and empowering young leaders to take control of their lives, the right way. Yes, there is a wrong way to go about it. I know a lot about that. I want every young leader to become who they want to be. I have found joy in developing tools and building programs to inspire young leaders to develop the inner courage to live an authentic life on a day-by-day basis.
Are you anxious to be you? Then get ready to be vulnerable. Are you anxious to be you? Then get ready for rejection. I ask again. Are you anxious to be you? Then get ready to be imperfect because our nature as human beings demand imperfection. Are you anxious to be you? Then be ready to stand up for your own truth even against the opinions of others. I ask one more time. Are you anxious to be you? Then get ready to live with the courage to embrace the unknown in spite of your fears.