I could not be happier! In 24h I will be heading to the airport to hit the slopes in French Alps 🙂 If I could live there, I’d be skiing every single weekend… But this is not a blog about my love of skiing, but rather what skiing (surprisingly!) taught me in life and business. I love skiing now, but the beginnings were not easy.
1. Feel the fear and do it anyway! 
Three years ago I went for a weekend skiing trip with my then new boyfriend and his friends. No idea what the hell I was thinking. Never skied before, and there I am with a group of advanced skiers. Biggest objective of that weekend: do not make a total idiot of myself.
I had a 4-hour crash course to skiing and then I just had to go ahead and ski…. I was *paralysed* with fear. And I mean PARALYSED. I could stand on the piste and be so terrified that I could not move, too scared to face the mountain downhill. I was counting down the hours to après-ski so I could indulge in couple of glasses of mulled wine and finally relax.
But eventually it would always come to the same point: ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I’m too scared, I can’t to it… [half an hour later]… F*ck it! I CAN do it’ and go down easily. Every. Single. Time.
It’s incredible how big effect fear has got on our lives. For some it is motivating, but for most – paralysing. It stops you from doing things, that deep down you feel you should or actually want to do. Every hour I stood there on the piste scared was an hour wasted. Don’t waste your time on being scared. You will do all those things anyway, it will just take a long time to overcome the fear. So screw it, feel the fear and do it anyway!
For those interested in the subject more, there’s actually a great book titled ‘Feel the fear and so it anyway‘ which I read few years back.
2. Practice makes the master
Initially, each piste would be a massive challenge, with many stops and ‘I can’t do it’- type monologues. But every single time I came back to the same piste, I noticed that I would be little bit more confident, faster, with fewer stops and eventually I would be able to do the whole piste in one go after few tries.
It applies to everything. If you’re scared of something or are not good at – do it frequently! This is the reason why I started this blog. I was very bad at writing so I decided to practice regularly by writing blogs and become better at it. And there you – now I even have you reading it! If you’re terrified of public speaking, sign up for Toastmasters or other public speaking meet-ups. If you’re not applying for jobs because you’re scared of interviews, then just go to a few for jobs that you’re not that interested. You can become great at anything. Research says you need 10,000 hours of practice to master something, but even few hours will help you to become better than you are now.
3. You can trick your mind
Few days ago at a dinner with friends someone asked me how after a year of not skiing (since last winter) I could still do it well or even better than last year. And I responded that it’s because I practised in my dreams! They all laughed at me a lot. But the truth is that because I was looking forward to the next skiing trip so much and thinking about it all the time, I would dream about skiing very often. I would do my best turns and be able to go really fast in my dreams. And then when I hit the slopes, I would do just that in real. I was amazed. I know this sounds very silly, but think about the last important meeting or presentation you had. The time when, on the way to work, you were going over and over through what you want to say in your head. See – you do it as well – you practised in your head. Your mind usually doesn’t differentiate between something happening in real life and something in your head (either thoughts or dreams). You can trick yourself. Not really sure yet how you can apply it in your life, so I’ll leave you to ponder on this idea…
Millennial Banter 
Very interesting Monika. I remember taking the boys on their first skiing trip about 11 years ago I think. Harry was about 8 or 9 and although we had private instruction is was very nervous. The instructor told me that by day 2 he would be better than me. BY day 4 we were navigating red runs in a partial blizzard and he sailed gracefully to the end whilst I car wheeled down the piste! Moral is that fear doesn’t just hit you at the start but when you think you have over-reached your skill. Mostly it is a self-imposed paralysis when we forget to enjoy what we are doing and worry a little too much about the consequences of a bad decision we are yet to make. Enjoyed your blog!
Great article, Monika! I saw it on Linkedin and clicked through. I read Susan Jeffer’s fear book too and took away some good insights. I learned a life lesson from playing softball. I was afraid of the ball speeding towards me and didn’t want to hit it, so I’d step back. My father said that’s actually how you can get hurt. If you step forward and swing into the ball, you’re more confident and in control. This also taught me how to deal with difficult situations – don’t turn away or ignore the issue, be proactive. Like skiing or blogging, this takes practice too 🙂 Thanks and best regards – Patricia