Thread by @nachoiacovino

On Friday, Zahra and I hosted a space called "Overcoming your fears".

We had some amazing speakers. For each of them, fear meant a different thing so they have a different way to overcome it.

I took notes and I compiled the best thoughts and advice of each of them.

Thread 🧵

.@icycodes:

She overcomes her fears by separating herself from the outcome, if she can focus on the experience, she's fearless.

She recommends resisting the urge to undermine your own accomplishments. Be proud of what you've done and don't worry about appearing egotistical.

"Every new level has a new devil", at every step of your career, you're gonna find new challenges and fears, it's a never-ending thing, no matter your years of experience.

She recommends having the mindset of "I'll be able to handle anything you throw at me".

.@nachoiacovino:

I try to be positive, trying to think of the best possible outcome of whatever I'm doing.

Starting a new job? It's gonna be awesome and my co-workers are gonna be great people.

I get stuck on a task? I remember all of the other times I got stuck in the past and how I've always been able to figure it out at the end.

I always had fear of failure and not knowing what I was supposed to do in life, finding my true calling (coding) alleviated those fears.

.@codelogik:

He's been working at Microsoft for 10 years, with time, he got bigger and bigger projects but that also increased his anxiety.

He started with impostor syndrome, as many of us have suffered, but with time, that disappear and he got other types of fears.

His biggest advice was that you should present yourself in a confident manner and lean on your strengths. If you're in the position that you are, it's because you deserve it.

.@shaundai:

In a performance review, she was surprised her colleagues described her as "fearless". She still *feels* fear, but battles it by taking calculated risks

She moved across the country. She got a job at Netflix after being an engineer for only a year.

Her biggest advice was to surround yourself with supportive people and cut people that don't get excited about your achievements and want to keep you on their level.

When people around you tell you that you're great, that you deserve everything, you start believing it too.

Fear is good, means that you're changing. Find people that have gone through what you're going right now.

The feeling of fear is never going away, but she recommends always going with the mindset that you're going to succeed at everything you do.

.@photonoty_codes:

She started coding in June 2020. At the start of 2021, she set a goal to get a job before the end of the year.

In March, she saw a job posting that she didn't really feel qualified to get yet.

So she sent the listing to a friend asking if it would be completely ridiculous for her to apply, to which he replied "Well, what do you have to lose?".

So she applied, thinking she was gonna get discarded every step of the way, no matter how well the interviews went.

And she ended up getting the job and has been working there for 4 months.

Her advice is to apply anyway, even if you think you're not ready. Not only might you get the job, but you may be more ready than you think. Fear has a way of clouding how you view yourself.

.@RoccoSangellino:

He suffers from anxiety, and his biggest fear was for people to find that out, he thought people would look at him differently or judge him. He didn't get help for 6 years because of that.

Then, he realized that hiding it was only making his anxiety worse.

He decided to tell his boss and to his surprise, he was extremely supportive. They became best friends, he explained that his boss changed his life.

If you open up to someone and they don't respond right, you know you should cut that person from your life and go somewhere else.

Rocco also explained that as Lead Engineer, he had to accept that he's not always the most knowledgeable person on the team about each topic.

He realized he had to learn how to be humble and not be afraid to ask questions even if that showed he didn't know everything.

.@tanoaksam:

People often ask him how he became so outgoing and outspoken, but it wasn't always like that. He used to be shy and had zero confidence.

His trick was to learn to take care of himself at the most basic human level. He made it his mission to learn survivor skills.

He wanted to have the ability to survive alone in the woods alone if it came to it.

He explained that knowing how to survive makes any career problems much less problematic. Even if everything goes wrong, he's always gonna be able to survive.

.@oliverjumpertz:

He started coding 21 years ago but still suffered a lot from impostor syndrome since he had a non-traditional background.

He had different fears the more he climbed the corporate ladder, but then he realized everyone at his level is in the same situation.

We love talking about our successes but we don't talk about our failures as much. Everyone looks better because of that. But everyone fails the same way.

He also realized that many people do amazing things just because they take action, they shut their fear and go for it.

Build self-awareness of what you're able to learn in what amount of time. If you know you can learn a new topic in a day or two, that alleviates fear if you have a presentation or a meeting with a client.

And this was it! Super interesting stuff from the space and I'm very happy I was able to capture some of the gems that the speakers said!

If you have any feedback, please tell me! I would love to digest some more spaces in the future and would love to improve on the format!

If you like this thread, you can follow me (@nachoiacovino), and all the amazing speakers from this panel.

And if you think someone else can benefit from it, make sure to retweet the first tweet!

https://twitter.com/nachoiacovino/status/1437437822437367823