Of all the things we have to help students overcome, work through, manage, and conquer, fear has to number high on the list. Fear of the unknown. Fear of trying. Fear of failing. Fear of letting others down. Fear of maintaining success. And the list goes on and on and on. We each have our own ways to help students with that sometimes-overwhelming and debilitating emotion. One of my favorite ways is to share the words of Zig Ziglar with my students, when he said, “F-E-A-R has two meanings: Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.” How true. For each of us, and our students, nothing could be more true.
How often I’ve taken the safe route and “run” from challenges for fear of failing. How often I’ve gone with an easier course rather than the better one that could have yielded far better results. I could go on for pages. But I can say unequivocally, that when I have “faced” those fears, it almost always ended up for the best. My modeling that for my students, my describing that for my students, and my helping them do just that may help them “rise” in ways they never thought imaginable. As the comedian Steve Harvey once said, “The best things in life are on the other side of fear.” Isn’t that the truth?
Peter Loel Boonshaft, Director of Education
KHS America
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