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"What would it feel like to live life without any fear?"
What is the other side of fear? At first it felt dark and heavy - intimidating. But then I thought, wouldn't the other side of fear mean that you got past fear? You conquered it. It's in the past - you are now on the other side!
Cool - so the other side of fear is like its opposite. So, the other side of fear must be...courage?
Maybe...sometimes. How about understanding? Faith. Trust. Those all work!
But...why in the heck am I still thinking about this? Then my thought continued...
"What would it feel like to live life without any fear?"
Whoah! That's a Keanu moment.
Life without fear. Hmmmm...okay, that's a tough one to imagine...sad to say.
In my opinion, whether we know it or not, we let fear dictate a whole lot of our lives. We all know that we live in a fearful country (US), but fear has a way of sneaking into the details of our life. Such as, what you really want to do with your life.
Are you doing it? If not, why?
Now, all those logical things you just listed off in your head - are any of them (or all of them) really just the extension of some deep seated fear? It might be doubt in your personal ability (guilty), fear of the unknown (been there), or just a fear that no one else has ever done it that way? Oh, we could rationally list plenty of reasons of why we shouldn't do something that we aspire to do - but if fear is at the heart of that reasoning - you need to get to the other side.
When I lost my full-time employment back in Spring '05 (yikes - time flies when you don't work for the man ;) ...I remember thinking and praying that I was going to keep my thought open to new opportunities - whether I thought I could do the job or not. I figured that as long as the opportunity felt like a pure expression of who I was as a person - I would not say "no" to it. Even if I was afraid of my lack of experience - I wasn't going to allow fear to be the determining factor. Two years later - I am still saying "yes!"
A week after I started praying about staying open and "saying yes" a friend called me to host her prestigious 4-day conference in Washington DC. I had never hosted a conference before - but it sounded fun - so I said yes! That same week I got elected to take a position in our church that would be demanding and new - and although I had never done it before - I said yes! A few months later some friends of mine asked me to start this blog. I had never blogged before - but I said yes! When a new friend of mine asked me if I would be in a movie he was creating - I said yes (okay - that was a no-brainer). When I heard about a local company that worked with at-risk youth I decided I wanted to help too. When they asked me to try to create a training workshop on anger management and life choices - I said yes. I had never created a full-day workshop before, but it was for a good cause - and I knew people would be blessed as a result. Yes...yes...yes!
I believe that all of these opportunities that came to me represented an aspect of who I wanted to be as a person - but I had to get to the other side of fear to experience them. If not, I would come up with plenty of "rational" reasons of why I should not do them.
In Science and Health , Mary Baker Eddy writes, "We should master fear, instead of cultivating it." Think again about those things you really want to do in your life, but aren't. Think of your mental garden - what are YOU cultivating?
For those of you who have demonstrated getting or living on the other side of fear - I would love to hear your story. Heck, maybe it will become a book some day.
Read more from this blogger at Travis Inc.
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