From my kindergarten to grade 2 years, I loved math a lot. It was peanuts. Yakang yaka.
But the love for the numbers started to wane when my teachers started to discuss about fractions, and decimals, natural numbers, integers, rational, real, complex numbers, etc. Complicated student life because of mathematics!
So the fear of math went on from grade four up to high school. Life became even more complicated and miserable because of trigonometry, advanced algebra, geometry, statistics, and most of all our math teachers! It even came to a point that my school had to summon my father because of my failing grades in Math!
I could not see the practical value of those mathematics subjects back then.
What I Did To Struggle Against the Fear of Numbers
When I finished high school, I was not sure if I could still go to college since my father was very sick then and has been bed-ridden for sometime. We were only relying on our small business of selling kakanin and other delicacies and home-made food. It wasn’t enough to send me and my brother to college.
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My late great grandfather pushed me to take the scholarship exams in his hometown Macabebe in Pampanga so I could go to college. He and my father also forced me to take Accountancy upon passing the exams. Yes, I did pass the math portion of the exam! Thank God for that miracle! 😛
And so I enrolled, took up and finished Accountancy for 5 gruelling years of counting numbers and logical-thinking torture. I still couldn’t believe that I was able to make it to the few and the proud Accountancy class.
And when I finished college, I knew I had a mission to accomplish: to get my family out of our financial brokenness. It’s a continuous struggle, but now I know how to fight. I may fall down, but I will rise again.
Today, I’m leading a financial education mission called Angat Pilipinas Coalition for Financial Literacy. Yes, it will always be about numbers and growing as a person with those numbers.
I turned my “fear of numbers” into “fear of poverty”. I turned “fearfulness” into “fierceness”. I raged against financial ignorance and poverty mindset. And this rage has become contagious.
Hey dude, whatever you’re afraid of doing and accomplishing right now, remember that you can always find ways to overcome them.
Know what hurts you. Seek what causes you pain. Never run away from it. Befriend it. Domesticate it. Be the master of your own fears. Remember, you are never alone. You have your numbers to back you up.
“Fear not, only believe.” – Mark 5:36
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