Hey there,

I’m Alex and I’m 23 years old. I’ve always been a very shy person and not great at interacting with people (like small talk and things like that… mainly being social). I’ve gotten better over the years, but there are times that my shyness gets in the way of doing things that I really want to do. Not just in my personal life, but in my career. That’s where it will hurt you.

I think you should pursue something that makes you happy and comfortable, something you actually see yourself doing. Once you have that figured out everything else will fall in place. You see when we as humans do something we really love and feel passionate about we become confident about it without even realizing it. That is what you need to figure out.

I wish you the best of luck and keep moving forward!
Alex M.

Hi,

I can’t say what you should do because I’m still figuring this stuff out for myself. I’ve read a number of times that life will present us with opportunities for growth until we have learned what needs to be learned. You seem to need your ‘shell’ of security. The thing is, I’ve seen it enough in the lives of others and my own life, that whenever you try to stop life from moving, just keep things the same, then you will also be removing the life from your life. By that I mean all the excitement, experiences, opportunities for growth, new people, friends, relationships. You see, it’s natural to want to remove all the risk and uncomfortable situations and build security and stability into your life. People do this by buying a house, getting a steady job and then they often get stuck in it and lead boring empty lives, too afraid to make a change. Their lives become stale and essentially they are just waiting to die. I know it sounds harsh but it’s true in many cases. If you want to live life to the full, it means you have to allow life. So, by default, that also means accepting risk, discomfort, and most certainly change. Actually, when you really do this, life can become really exciting and enjoyable. It just requires letting go, accepting all this, accepting the discomfort. Deep down remember that you will be OK. The thing about this ‘security’ that people try and create in their lives, not only does it make your life stale, the security is just an illusion anyway, it can all fall apart very quickly because life will make changes even when you don’t want it to. There are plenty of examples of people keeping the same job for decades and then being made redundant and losing a lot of the security they sacrificed there own happiness to gain, eg losing a large amount of their pension. They also find it very difficult to get another job sometimes because they have been doing the same thing for decades so have a very narrow range of experience, so they also end up being trapped. That is the price of ‘security’.

Anyway, to come back to my first line. Perhaps life is trying to teach you to let go of the shell by providing you with opportunities to do just this. After all, that is true freedom, liberation, if you can feel safe and trust without needing to have a particular set of circumstances. People who build these illusionary shells are very vulnerable if a crack appears, e.g. they lose their job, because they can’t deal with change, it’s too uncomfortable and frightening for them because they’ve avoided it for so long. After all, when you avoid fear it grows.

You speak of this as a great opportunity and you also applied in the first place so you must want it at some level. You’ve also got quite far so maybe you’re better than you think. If you get through, maybe it’s meant to be. On the other hand, if you genuinely feel it’s not right for you then by all means don’t do it, but you have to learn to figure that part out for yourself. I once got fairly far for a quite prestigious position but pretty soon realised that it was not me at all to do a job like that, it just didn’t fit who I am so once I realised this I said no to it and know I did the right thing. The question is, does it fit who you are, do you really want to do it in your heart, it’s just that fear is holding you back, or does it just seem like a ‘good job’ as other people would describe it but you know that it would make you miserable to do it? The thing is, even if you make the wrong choice for you, you will learn from the mistake, sometimes it’s necessary to make the wrong choice in order to know that you don’t want something.

Good luck,

Ben.