T-minus sixteen days and counting.
I finished moving out of my ex-house in Boulder late last June. I've had a bit more than nine months now to focus on building my new life, and I struggle to feel like I have much to show for it. People who love me feed back to me that I've done a lot of growing, so I take some heart in their opinions, but, well, sometimes it's hard not to say, "Personal growth plus a subway token will get you onto the subway."
I certainly believed that I'd be a lot further along with building my career than I am now. The honest truth is that I'm terrified that I won't succeed, and I'm even more terrified that I will--fear of success is way scarier than fear of failure. As I've written many times on Free Refills, it's far easier to stay stuck in a place you know, no matter how miserable you are there, than it is to move boldly into something different. You know this place of stuckness. You feel safe here. You know you can survive here, because you've been doing it for so long. Everything is under control.
To move forward, I will have to let go of everything I know about myself and my life. I will have to relinquish that control.
I have read this advice uncountably many times: When in doubt, act "as if." I'm taking a huge plunge with this trip, because I'm trying to act as if I've fully embodied the belief that not only do I have something to offer, but that I can express it well enough that others will see it.
I'm scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.
“I’m scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.”
That, my friend, is what we call courage. It may not seem like it, but you’ve already taken the first step on the journey.
Thank you, my friend, for this comment. It really touched me.
Do you act ‘as if’ or do you embrace the fact that you are no guru, even if you have a highly advanced skill in a healing artform that basically only one other person has. You are terrified but courageous, introspective and yet self-attacking and sabotaging. You are fucking *living it*. You are on the path. All that advice you give me: it applies with equal force to you, my love. The people you will reach, they will need precisely what you have at precisely this level of consciousness with deep compassion and personal connection to the perceived struggle around climbing 14ers, with their zig zag trail back and forth.
And. On this trip, the truth is that you have a talent that would benefit every athlete (indeed: every person), you’ve earned as if in the form of is.
Xo