As annoyed as I get by the overabundance of inspirational quotes flooding so many social media platforms (I wrote a monologue all about it, maybe I’ll share that one day), every once in awhile there will be a kernel of truth in one of them that I really appreciate.
“Feel the fear and do it anyway” (which came to me from the world of network marketing) and “do something that scares you” (which I think I first saw on a Lululemon bag) both capture the sentiment I want to talk about today, and so does a quote which I wish I could type word for word right now. Unfortunately, all I’ve got is this: at some point probably more than five years ago, a celebrity contestant got eliminated from whatever season of Dancing with the Stars and I heard a snippet of her farewell speech on the radio as I struggled to wake myself up that morning. Her words, heavily paraphrased by me here, and delivered with a lot of emotion (I think she might have been crying) were: “Whatever you’re most afraid of, run toward that thing as fast as you can; I promise there is something amazing on the other side!”
(Sidebar: can any of you find the actual quote for me? You can imagine how fruitless my search has been, years later and with such sketchy info to go by.)
Fear does have its function, and a very useful one – so I’m not going to start telling you to go fly in the face of safety and reason. What I am going to do (in my next post, so stay tuned), is tell a little story about how I feel more empowered today than I did a month ago, because I recognized and called out a fear that was inside my mind. I faced off with it, and I hope I can learn to value “scaring myself” enough that one day it’ll just come naturally to me.
It’s important to recognize at least some of the many times that fear, while you might assume it is helping you, is actually hindering your growth and/or learning. Listening to your fear may keep you safe . . . and yet, isn’t safety itself kind of dangerous? When you feel safe, you’re less observant. More complacent. Easier prey for, say, a pickpocket than someone who acknowledges the risk of being pickpocketed and keeps their guard up. Feeling fear is a sign that you’ve left your comfort zone, or are about to; and at the risk of leaning too heavily on more annoying quotes, leaving your comfort zone is almost always a prerequisite for earning any new stripes in this life.
Anyway, I wanted to get these thoughts down before sharing the actual story in detail. Come back soon to read the whole thing 
xoxo