For me courage is acting inspite of fear.
In this case, say, if I am afraid that someone can hurt my ego, I just start interacting with the person anyway, before my fear became overwhelming and I can't deal with it.
Yes, they say that experiences cant' be bad. But if you experience makes you scared to do something later and limits your abilities in any area (personal interactions in this case) I wouldn't call it good.
Who wouldn't like to be smooth and skillfull in major areas of life? But unfortunately it rarely comes without experience, ups and downs and clumsiness. For me the answer is just "keep trying".
You can't imagine how alien people in States seem to me sometimes and how scared I used to be of communicating with them with my clumsy language and different views. But It's the question of survival. You either trying inspite of fear and putting yourself on the line, sometimes being ridiculed and "stomped on", but you are still learning and improving or you will always be "different" and have much fewer opportunities than those who are not scared.
|