With the current semester winding down, many people are graduating, looking for summer jobs or just planning some other worldly experience that isn\u2019t school. When school ends, the wide open world seems scary and relentless and unconquerable. Going out in to the world becomes a daunting task without the familiarity of school. I often find a sort of \u201cwall\u201d builds up in my head when I try to think about attempting something new, which leads to avoiding this thing, which makes this \u201cwall\u201d higher, which brings me\u00a0back to the start of this cycle with a lot more anxiety. Why do we build these types of things up so much in our head, blowing them out of proportion?<\/p>\n
In short it\u2019s analogous to procrastination, but in the long run it\u2019s limiting our potential to grow, experience new things, and overcome anxiety. Research tends to link building up these walls with perfectionism and fear of failure traits (Muszynski and Akamatsu, 1991). So how do you get past that wall? The best way is to just do something<\/em>. Really, anything. If the problem is being consumed by your thoughts, then the only thing you can do is get out of your head. Even if that something is only loosely\u00a0related to the actual task you should be doing, taking a bit of pressure off can be a very powerful tool to help you focus when your mind isn\u2019t going 100 kilometers an hour. Personally, I find coaxing myself into doing only 10 or 20 minutes of a task I don\u2019t want to do really helps put things into perspective. You\u2019ll likely get a bit of momentum from starting, and you\u2019ll likely see that completing a project is slightly more manageable than was built up in your head. Sources<\/p>\n Muszynski, S. and Akamatsu, T. (1991). Delay in completion of doctoral dissertations in clinical psychology. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice<\/em>, 22(2), pp.119-123.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the current semester winding down, many people are graduating, looking for summer jobs or just planning some other worldly experience that isn\u2019t school. When school ends, the wide open world seems scary and relentless and unconquerable. Going out in to the world becomes a daunting task without the familiarity of school. I often find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37966,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37966"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4283,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions\/4283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf anything, just focus on how relieved you\u2019ll feel after you\u2019re done. Unfortunately some uncomfortable things are bound to happen in life, but you must at least try. If you\u2019re feeling hopeless, really do just give it a shot, and I promise it will be less scary than you\u2019re thinking it is. Just do it! Be alive! Experience the lows and highs for all they\u2019re worth; explore them.
\nWritten by Taryn Nowak-Stoppel<\/em><\/p>\n