Everyone is scared of something, whether that's the dark, heights, small places, spiders or failure etc. Fear is something everyone has. The block between fear and the feeling of freedom is your comfort zone.

All the best things in life are placed on the other side of fear. Taking that leap or pushing yourself to do something that you usually would never dare to do is exhilarating. I'm sure you've all been in that state where your palms are sweaty, you've got butterflies in your stomach and you feel sick or lightheaded. All because it's your turn to make a speech or you're about to jump out of a plane, the list goes on. It doesn't matter what situation you're in, we've all felt extremely nervous for lots of things, especially if they are outside our comfort zones.

Alongside fear is failure. Not everything will turn out perfect. For example, this year I've done many performances and things outside my comfort zone.

So far none of them have run perfectly smoothly, whether it's forgetting your lines halfway through your biggest paragraph in a Shakespeare competition, forgetting your solo song during the second verse, or making a fool of yourself in assembly because you told everyone to stand up and leave when the prefects haven't left yet and they are all silently whispering to you but you can't hear them.

All of these mistakes have either made me want to fall down on the ground and cry or laugh. After slipping up on stage you have to keep going, if you forget your song just keep going, if you make mistakes in front of audiences of 300 plus, just keep going. If you fall down you do not have to stay down. You can recover and keep pushing yourself.

Forgetting my song during the musical crushed me because I so desperately wanted this musical to be the best. Trying to quickly improvise and move along so the audience doesn't notice takes a lot of hard work, especially when you freeze and have intense eye contact with your fellow cast mates like they know your lines off by heart more than you do.

This knock back of embarrassment was huge in my world at the time, but now it's just a funny memory. This failure that I thought would ruin my whole last year at Queen's didn't create a new fear of forgetting my lines- it made me feel self assured. You know that you can mess up and move on because the worst has already happened. You can now laugh at yourself and not take everything so seriously.

Fear is a constant battle between you and yourself. The only person stopping you from accomplishing your goals is you. We can make excuses all we like but in reality this comfort zone stops us from living the life we want to live.

I'm going to leave you all with one of my favourite quotes from Mr Will Smith, “you realise that the point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear”. Do not let fear get the best of you.