Today's Challenge:
Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who's already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:
Is the insecurity you're defending worth the dream you'll never realize? or the love you'll never venture? or the joy you'll never feel?
Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?
Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?
Today's entry:
I've spent too much time trying to hunt down that one fear that kept me from moving forward in life. Was it fear of failure, fear of success, fear of mediocrity? Was it fear of alternating days of success and failure, with a sprinkle of mediocrity and a dash of cinnamon?
It's natural to want to blame our problems on one thing – one staggering trauma or overwhelming terror. If one thing is to blame, no matter how horrifying, we only have one thing to fix.
For most of us, I suspect it's a lot more complicated. What's holding us back isn't a rampaging Godzilla of fear, it's 1000 Lilliputians with their tiny ropes. Every setback, every rejection, every unkindness braids another rope. They're imperceptible at first, and then one day we wake up to find ourselves immobilized.
At some point, brute force won't break those bonds – the ropes will have to come off the same way they went on, one by one. We have to get up in the morning, even if facing the day seems meaningless. We have to make the decisions that seem pointless. We have to take one brick off of our wall of bad habits, even if we can't see the top of it.
The worst part is that breaking the first 50 ropes won't feel any different. We won't be rewarded for our heroism. Fighting those tiny fears is an act of faith – faith that, while tomorrow will feel no different from today, a month from now we'll be able to wiggle our big toe.
So, I'm working on the small fears. I'm working to do my work a little better, get out of bed a little faster, start projects a little sooner, think a moment longer before I act out in frustration.
Sooner or later, I'll break enough of those ropes, and the fear will learn to run from me.
