Facing My Worst Fears

I’m Linda Fink and this is 5 Days of Facing My Fears. I recently came across the blog of Michelle Polar, an incredible woman who quit her job one day so that she could take on a project that had her facing 100 fears in 100 days. The rest of the posts in have me eating luxurious foods and trying cool spa treatments and traveling to different parts of the world. So why on earth, if I’m the producer of the series, would I put myself in a position to be scared? And then I stopped and I said, “Linda, stop.” Not everything is easy. If you want to grow as a person, you need to challenge yourself. And now on Monday, I’m gonna pull out what I have to do today and then we’ll go from here and plan the rest of my week. Yay! Alright, here it goes. Good luck. I hope it’s a really scary one.

Facing My Worst Fears Photo Gallery

I hope it’s not! Oh God! What? Eating crickets. Oh my god. I was hoping I wouldn’t get that one. No! Day one: I ate crickets and I challenged myself to eat not one, not two, but three crickets. Before I started, my cameraman ate a few just to show me that it would be okay. It’s kind of like corn. Are you kidding? Holy shh..I can’t do it! Andrew, I can’t do it. Step one is get used to holding them. Oh my god. I don’t want it. And what did it feel like? Wait, it moved! Should I throw it up and catch it in my mouth? That’s fun! I’ll throw it up and catch it. Wait, it broke. It broke in my hands! It’s just protein, it’s just corn, it’s just corn and protein. Ahh! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

It’s down. Ahhhh I did one! One down. Okay. The last cricket. Oooh! Not bad but it’s a fing cricket. Looking back on today’s experience, I was really, really freaking out. I mean, borderline overreacting and I know that. I’m comfortable saying it. So I’m glad I conquered that fear but never, ever, ever doing that again. So on Tuesday, let’s see what we’ve got. Oh my god. Oh! Biking around New York City. That’s scarier than eating the freaking crickets. You think? When I moved here, I saw everybody biking. I thought it was safe so I did it and I was terrified and I went back home after two blocks. I’m like, “I’m not doing it, I’m not dying today.

” I have now lived in New York City for two years and surprisingly enough, I have never biked here. To paint you a nice New York City picture, in the past three weeks, I myself have witnessed three bikers get hit by cars and two pedestrians get hit by bikers. This city is loud, it’s fast moving, people are everywhere. It is wild. Wild. And you’re not allowed to bike on the sidewalks. You need to stay in the streets with the cars or in the narrow bike lanes. I felt like people could tell it was my first time riding through the city. Someone waved at me and was like, “You got this girl! Keep going!” I rode through some incredibly tight spaces, scared every minute of the way that a car door was going to open up and just take me out.. but I made it! I’m alive. Two fears down and I’m a cricket eating cyclist. I kind of feel like the queen of the world right now. Woohoo! Let’s do it. Please be something easy. No! Look, the more uncomfortable you get, the greater the post and the greater the reward.

You’re right. Oh this will be good. I’ll be uncomfortable. Reading negative internet comments out loud. Wow. That’s a great one. You guys know me. I host a lot of post content here. I upload it to and Facebook and Snapchat Discover and then I invite the world to comment below and give me their feedback. Most of the time, the feedback that I’m getting from the world is awesome but when I come across something rude, the last thing I want to do is read it out loud and broadcast it to the world. So today, I took on that fear head-on. That’s mean. Sorry Kathy. Yes I can! That’s a comment! I would love a sandwich right now. What are we gonna do about these people? If I’m going to successfully progress in my career, I need to be 100% okay with ingesting the negative comments that come my way. I need to be able to read it aloud, grasp my personal feelings on it, and move along.

Alright, Thursday. Let’s see what’s in store. Speak to a psychic. Oh my god. Why are you afraid of that? Psychics and mediums. Creepy. True story: I’ve been avoiding these people for my entire life. If there’s going to be a traumatic moment or death or disease or ailment, don’t tell me. So today I opened up my apartment to a woman named Colleen. The first thing she did was sage me down, to clear off my negative energy and, bad sign, the fire alarm went off. Oops! So, all I need from you is to take some deep breaths. She could sense my fear and anxiety so we did some breathing techniques to calm me down. Nice deep yoga breaths. Is spirit in the room? So my pendulum turns clockwise when it’s a yes. She just discovered that a female spirit was in the room with me and upon further questioning of the pendulum, we found out that it was my grandmother Beatrice. So Beatrice is here? Beatrice.

Interesting. I have never met Beatrice before. She passed away long before I was born. My grandma’s my spirit guide too. It’s very common. My middle name is Beatrice. Well, if you’re named for her of course she’s gonna stay close. There ya go. At LindaBFink. It was kind of nice to hear that she was there with me and she’s my spirit guide. Colleen told me some crazy stories. She’s seen and spoken to ghosts, she told me some things that would make the hairs on anyone’s arms stick right up. But, by the end our session, I was not scared anymore and I was so happy and proud of myself for getting over the fear. Ahh! No, no, no, no. Wait. Oh my god! Nooooo! I need to hold a tarantula.

Ask any of my close friends and they will tell you that I’m so afraid of, honestly all bugs, but mostly giant bugs. Trying to figure out where to go today, I googled, “Giant Bugs” and was led directly to Ryan the Bug Man, a guy who has over 150,000 insects and brings his collection on the road for educational programs. My cameraman and I rented a car and drove three and a half hours today to Pennsylvania to visit Ryan and his bugs. If you stuff a tarantula in your mouth and it bites you, it’s not gonna kill you but it’s gonna bite you because you stuffed it in your mouth. It doesn’t wanna be in your mouth. The first insect that I held was a scorpion. This is Kevin. His name was Kevin. Hollywood loves these. When you see scorpions on TV, nine times out of ten, they’re big ones like this, because they’re totally and completely harmless. None of this stuff is gonna hurt you. There you go. Kevin! Hi! That’s Kevin. After holding him for a little while, it was sort of just like a black lobster was in my hands. Not creepy at all. He was really cute.

We became friends. That’s really all there is to it. Next I moved on to probably the most disturbing part of the day, the hissing cockroaches. Okay, so… Not such a big deal. Do this. We’ll start off small. Okay! After he put one, and then two, and then seven in my hands at once, I calmed down. Wow. Flatten out your hands and now it’s pretty cool. There you go. Oh yeah. And last but not least, the tarantula. These are the classic pet shop, buy a pet, kind of tarantula that you can find. There are no deadly tarantulas anywhere on the planet. Really? Nobody ever died from a tarantula bite, ever. She’s so light.

And at first, I thought she was incredibly creepy looking, but after she sat in my hand for a few seconds, I realized how sweet and innocent and harmless she is. By the end of my hour long visit, I was totally BFFs with each and every creature. This is Jack. And I have to say, this fear is the one this week that has really turned my life around. I can confidently state to the internet with 100% certainty, that I have gotten over my fear of spiders and all insects. This week made my heart race, it made me scream, it made me more physically uncomfortable than I’ve been in years. But I did it! Thanks so much for reading and let me know what you want to see next time on. Hey ! Thanks for reading my post with Michelle Polar. Click right here to read another post on Refinery’s blog and here to comment to us on . Also, don’t forget to comment to Michelle’s blog, .com/hellofears.