Do It Anyway: How Quest Helped Me Triumph over my Anxiety

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
–
Nelson Mandela

Tayah completed the Quest one-year discipleship program in 2018. Here’s how her experience with Quest changed her – in her own words:

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Anxiety has been a huge part of my life since I was young. It has kept me from living my life and almost kept me from going through with the best decision I have ever made – joining Quest. Going into my year at Quest, I knew it would be a challenge because of my anxiety.

Every new step we were encouraged to take, either on trips or in the classroom, my anxiety continued to hold me back. My intentions and hopes in choosing to do this program was to get rid of my anxiety. What I was learning quickly though was that my anxiety wasn’t going to go away. It was there with me everyday.

As we moved throughout the year, learning more about ourselves, community, and God, I was gaining more and more leverage to get past my anxiety. We learned about what voices we let ourselves listen to. I had a lot of time on our trips to examine what voices I was listening to. They were all voices of fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. And they were constant.

Wanting to get the most from this experience, I knew early on that I couldn’t just stand back and let things pass me by like I normally would. I had to jump in – no matter what the voices of fear told me. It took time, but I slowly began learning to ignore the false voices and put my trust in the one voice that truly matters – God’s.

When this change started showing up there was no ignoring it. I went from holding back in everything I did to diving right into everything. It still took time, but in choosing to live that way I felt so free.

Since leaving Quest I haven’t been able to ignore the change I went through. It shows up every day. There are so many moments when I realize how different I am now, being able to just live without the fear stopping me. All the fear and anxiety is still there, but it’s been so much easier to ignore them.

I recently got the chance to go back and do a hike that we did on one of our Quest trips. It was one of our first trips and the biggest hike we had done. That hike tore me apart – a little physically, but most of it was mentally. The entire way up I was telling myself I wasn’t going to make it up. So much self-doubt and anxiety surrounding that made the hike miserable for me. Returning to this hike definitely made me uneasy. I saw it as a test to prove how much Quest had changed me.

It definitely proved a lot. I felt completely different and was so proud of myself. There was pain, there was doubt, but the difference in the mental game was profound. I couldn’t believe it myself. Quest was life-changing. It showed me that I have the power to be courageous and that no fear can stop me from living the life God intended for me.