Don’t Be Afraid to Start

Here you are, standing at the precipice of a new opportunity. You can see it, oh-so clearly, it’s real in your mind’s eye: you can almost touch it.

You catch yourself shivering- it’s not that cold out, so that can’t be it- you’re literally shaking with excitement. This is your chance. Your moment. The time has come.

It’s so easy- here it is, just reach out and take it- so why don’t you?

Why do you find yourself fixed to the spot, trembling as though you’d been pulled out of a frozen lake in the winter?

…Then something different starts to set in.

The whispers of doubt. The hot-and-cold feeling of dread washing over you. The sinking feeling in the depths of your stomach.

Here we go again.

Why is it that, in spite of your knowledge of the reality of your potential, and the clear path to fulfilling this dream of yours, you find that taking the first step is the most cripplingly, terrifyingly impossible thing you have ever attempted to do?

…And it only gets harder from there, because the longer you stay transfixed in your doubt, the more it seeps into your surroundings, colouring your vision your world so that nothing looks like it should, and everything apprears much more diffictult and terrifying than it should. It colours the image in the looking-glass when you look at it- you see a failure, an awful track record, a high chance of yet another failure. You hear the comments that will be said, or at least thought about. The ridicule. The disgrace.

You feel shame.

Suddenly, in an instant, something you were excited to do has become a terrifying beast- a threat to your safety and happiness, instead of the promise of an opportunity to be fulfilled in life, to grow and to learn, that it is supposed to be (and still is).

To make matters EVEN WORSE, it doesn’t stop at your biggest dreams. It climbs onto everything you try to pick up. As your confidence in yourself and in your abilities is eroded, you “adjust” your worldview and try to choose “more realistic” dreams and ambitions, and fail to reach those too, overcome by this demon that follows you everywhere.

This is a cycle some of us go through several times a year at the very least, and for some, at least once a day, in the worst-case-scenario.

It takes you to a deeper place of sorrow where you almost feel cursed by your creativity- burdened to forever reach for something you “will never be able to achieve.”

I NEED to debunk that, RIGHT NOW.

The only reason you WILL “never achieve” this thing you so much want, is if you DECIDE not to try.

Fear is a big bully. It makes you feel a compulsion to do things or not to do things by being big and loud and intimidating with its lies disguised as facts. Oftentimes what we don’t realise is that the choice to obey is still ours.

You can keep running, or you can turn around and face it. Fear told you that if you took that leap from this side of the canyon, you’d fall and be destroyed.

Based on what fear has told you, “Safe” is over here in this dark corner, alone, doing nothing, being no-one, risking nothing.

Even in that dark corner, you still see the image of a person you admire, respect and want to be. That person who’s weathered the elements, waded through fjords, climbed mountains, and fought beasts several times their size!

That person you saw and admired in your mind IS you!

There’s only one thing that fear can’t stand, and it’s this:

Being ignored.

Walk right past the bully- one step at a time.

You just need to take ONE, teeny tiny step, out of the corner, away from the direction fear has been driving you. And when you’ve taken that one, you find a little more strength to take another… and another… and yet another, until you find you’ve broken into a run, running past your fear, towards your dream, faster than you thought your legs could carry you.

Before you know it, you will take flight, with wings you never realised you had.

Watch yourself blossom. Watch yourself burst into a flurry of fire and magic- if you would only give yourself the chance.

Don’t be afraid to start.

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