Doing Stuff that Scares Us
I try to be my best self but don’t always succeed. I watch a TV show instead of reading or eat a cookie instead of hitting the karate bag or doing yoga. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves there's no more running around in circles or chasing our tail - just move forward today on.
For me, it’s reading books, listening to audiobooks, learning from my staff, my family, and it's modeling others who are doing things that I want to know how to do. It’s having an A.B.L. mindset - Always Be Learning. Then take what we admire the most and put it into everything we do.
I was beyond grateful to get together with some of my peers in the nonprofit industry this week and learned that a few of us are facing difficult decisions - the kind you might have encountered before where there's this one path we know we need to travel but it's filled with all that garbage that scares us.
Have you ever felt that way? Author Steven Pressfield says that being paralyzed with fear is a good sign. “Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do… the more scared we are of our work or a calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it”.
At this convening, I was reminded that there is an awesome life, far beyond anything our imagination can conjure, waiting for us right on the other side of all that stuff we’re afraid of. And no matter how hard you try to avoid the things that frighten us, there is no way around them, only through them. When we get stuck it’s what Henry David Thoreau called out as “the mass of [people] lead lives of quiet desperation".
The crazy truth to it all is that doing what we fear like planning knee surgery, telling someone you love them for the first time, getting your art in a gallery, or taking a new job. Doing all of it usually isn’t bad at all - it’s the thinking about it that will slowly kill us.
What’s at the heart of the thing we’re afraid to do is like the monster under the bed we all had as kids… because just like that monster, all of what scares us is totally make-belief. We must approach the monster head on, feel its piercing eyes and sharp claws, and do what needs to be done.
What do you need to do that scares you?
