I love traveling and try to get away as often as possible, yet despite this I long suffered with a fear of flying, to the point where I would get nervous about holidays, rather than excited. The closer it got to an upcoming holiday the more nervous I would get and it wasn’t until I safely landed at my destination that I would finally get excited.
Fortunately, I have now overcome that fear and I will now share, firstly how I managed to keep motivating myself to travel so much despite having such a strong fear of flying and secondly how I overcame this fear altogether and are now able to apply the same techniques any time I feel anxious about something and how it’s even helped my photography.
When booking a holiday somewhere I would always focus on how I would feel actually being in such a place. I would imagine myself being there and the fun I would have. I would NEVER focus on what it would take to actually get there, or think about getting on a plane, only on the enjoyment of being in a new destination and the things I would do. I would then book everything in a state of excitement and it wasn’t until the holiday was actually approaching that I would then start thinking ‘Oh crap that means getting on a plane!’ But by that point it was too late, everything had already been booked. Having spent all that money and arranged things with friends, backing out wasn’t an option and sat in the airport I knew it was just something I had to face up to.
In anything in life, what you focus on is incredibly important and can make the difference between you doing something and not doing something, so start to consciously decide where you put your focus. Make a choice to focus on all the enjoyment you would get by actually doing something and imagine it going well rather than focusing on your fears.
The more you do something, the easier it gets and true enough by doing this over and over again, the more I flew the more relaxed I was about it each time. I started to realise that all those strange sounds weren’t some sort of mechanical failure, or those sudden, big movements weren’t us dropping out of the sky but were perfectly normal. Gradually by continuing to take action and facing up to my fears by choosing what I focused on, I am now able to fly comfortably and without any concerns or anxieties.