Grace Beverley

And, yeah, I mean, we'll leave all of your info in the show notes, but I'm sure people have seen you before and I'm sure they will be seeing you again.

What is up?

I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing.

Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

What is up and welcome back to Working Hard.

Today we're talking about something that I genuinely think is shaping our careers and our creativity and our relationships and our confidence so much more than we realise, which is the fear of being cringe.

I think at the very surface is actually the fear of trying, which feels like being cringe because currently, nowadays, we have such a big audience everywhere.

This for a lot of us is a very real paralyzing fear of looking embarrassing in public, of trying something and having someone roll their eyes at you, of putting yourself forward and being judged for it.

I did a bonus episode on this over a year ago now and it got such a huge response and since then I've come to genuinely think that the main thing that holds most people back is not a lack of talent, it's not a lack of ideas, it's not even a lack of discipline.

it is a fear of what other people think and what makes that even sadder I think is that some of the people with the most to give are often the ones holding back the most because they are hyper aware of how they're perceived and I really don't think we ourselves are to blame because we're living in a time where everything feels very public it is very public it feels permanent

It feels open to commentary and that makes risk feel heavier than it ever has before.

So today I really want to unpack why that is.

I want to talk through three steps that have really helped me to actually get over this fear in a very practical way.

I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you do, please don't forget to follow us on whichever platform you're listening to this on.

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So firstly, I want to start by talking about the idea that we're more scared to try than ever.

And I really don't think that's dramatic.

There's actually research showing that Gen Z and younger millennials report higher levels of social anxiety and fear of negative evaluation than previous generations.

And a lot of psychologists actually link that to the rise of social media, which I think we can probably all agree with.

And with that coming the constant visibility, the feeling of being observed and perceived the whole time.