Fear. While most people say that they can define the black-eyed mind-controlling monster, they are incorrect. I, like these people, couldn’t fully understand fear until it reared its ugly head while rowing in the fall of 2016.

Sweat drips down my agonizing back as I thrust the ore rowing myself and my team forward cutting through the frigid waters. While my body is constantly fatigued adjusting to the wind, waves, sweltering heat, or the frosty air, my mind is free to drift and to sift whatever needs to be sorted or straightened out in my life— an argument with my mom, a test from school. When my whole body loosens and my breath starts to settle into a brisk rhythm, the roles switch causing my mind to become agile in approaching and solving each difficult task from the passed day, but the real trouble starts after my mind is set in order. It’s when the fear of the outcome of the decisions that I have made start to run rampant throughout my thoughts, when the doubt starts to set in and take control. Although it puts more stress on myself while rowing, realizing the burden that fear was on my mentality is what I am most thankful for in life because I knew that if I had a chance at success, I had to get rid of it. Understanding that fear was controlling me lead to the astounding discovery that stress is what has kept people back in achieving their goals for centuries. What if Thomas Jefferson gave up on creating the lightbulb because he was scared of failing, or if Martin Luther King didn’t what to share his world-changing dream because he was afraid, where would that leave us? These few people who have conquered their doubts are the ones who have made a true mark on the world, history, and life itself. After realizing this, I have put myself on the track to become this type of a person due to rowing. 

After vigorous rowing sessions five days a week, I have come to an understanding with fear. It is when I overthink and obsess so much about things until the point where I give up and forget about it. Right now, I, like many others, am not living my dreams because I am living my fears. I refuse to be that person anymore which is why overcoming such anxiety is and has been imperative to shaping the person I am becoming.