What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?
The title of today’s post comes from a conversation in one of our first Bend Reality cohorts. The person who said it was explaining how he finally made the decision to take a leap of faith beyond his comfort zone; the line was the motto of a person he found online, and it resonated with him enough that he pushed past his fears.
For me, what would you do if you weren’t afraid stopped me in my tracks. Like most folks, I use logic and reason to avoid confronting my fears. “That would be impractical” or “don’t be rash” or “consider all the variables” are all ways that we avoid testing our boundaries.
Fear doesn’t always manifest itself as “OMG, I’m terrified!” It has many other ways of appearing in our lives. Let’s try a little exercise, if you’re game…
For your own benefit, please write down any fears that you recognize as being present for you, and scribble a few words about them.
Once you have recognized the presence of fear in your life, there are many ways to manage that fear in a productive manner. If you like, you could take the tactics shown below and use them to analyze some of the fears you just identified. Which tactics seem most productive and helpful to you?
There is, of course, another path forward. You could simply choose the fear that is front and center in your life, and confront it head on. Entirely up to you…
For the purpose of encouraging others, please feel free to comment with a time you overcame your fears.
Your title is a very loaded question, Bruce. It really is the nugget at the heart of so many decisions. It's funny to think about, but when I was 30 I made the decision to get out of the Marine Corps. I didn't have a job lined up. I didn't know where I was going to live. I just knew that I needed to take my life in a new direction. I could have stayed in the military for several more years and gone along with the routine and structure that was in place. Instead, I set my fear of "the civilian world" aside and took the leap. Now, more than 30 years later, I realize that fear has held me back in so many situations. It's now time to confront that fear of (fill in the blank) and move forward again.