Some people let their fears rule them, others face theirs head on. Personal trainer James Tan doesn’t just face his fears; he eagerly jumps in head first at any opportunity to confront them.
The first was his phobia of heights. James had signed on as a peacekeeper with the army, where his training required him to have a competency in rappelling from helicopters. His fear didn’t stop him from being one of the first to volunteer when it was time to rappel off the training tower. “When we were doing our training, I was scared to even go up the steps of the tower”, he recalls.
“At the top, when the dispatcher said I could go, I tried to jump but my legs wouldn’t budge from the platform.” He couldn’t bring himself to step off even though he had prepared for it by going on a rollercoaster ride prior to the training. James tried three more times (unsuccessfully) to jump before he finally managed the leap of faith. At long last, he overcame his fear one storey at a time, volunteering to rappel repeatedly at increasing heights until he eventually jumped off a helicopter hovering at an eightstorey height.
James then tackled his fear of public speaking in similar fashion. He intentionally took on leadership roles in the motivational seminars he participated in, where he was forced to speak to an audience. “The first few minutes are always terrifying, but I tell myself to be cool and enjoy the process; that I have much to share with the audience and that they will love to learn from me,” he explains. “I try to use the crowd’s energy, and not to feel so self-conscious.”
James recently even went to the extent of signing up as a freelance model to overcome his stage fright. His first assignment required him to catwalk in front of a 500- strong crowd in just his briefs. “I persisted at overcoming these obstacles in spite of my fear,” says James, whose participation in Are You Men’s Health Enough? is a continuation of his tests of his resolve. “I always ask myself, if I can’t even overcome small challenges like that, how can I achieve the greater things in life?”
Not content with overcoming his fears, James is also a fan of continuous learning and self-improvement. “I realised that, as a person, there are actually so many areas we can awork on,” he says. “It’s like the Chinese saying, ‘Water flows downward, a man aims upward’. It’s important to develop and improve yourself in order to reach greater heights and achievements in life.”
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