“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” - Harriet Tubman (1820-1913)
I love this quote from Harriet Tubman. In fact, in hangs on one of the walls of my house, right underneath her photograph. I decided to put it up to keep reminding myself that any perceived limitations in my life exist because I put them there. They only exist in my mind because the of the admittedly crazy ideas I have about who or what I should be.
True confession: I don't like being afraid, but I am. I absolutely hate the feeling.
For me, being afraid of something is tantamount to giving up before I've even started. Not cool at all. While I like to say that I don't like thinking that my life has predefined limits, sometimes I let others' opinions creep in and influence my program.
I want to clarify my focus here. I don't have a problem with some types fears...like being afraid of spiders, snakes, bugs, dogs, heights. That list could go on and on, right? Maybe you can submit to hypnosis to help you with that, but those are not the types of fears that keep you from living the life you want. It's the other fears, the bigger ones that keep us stagnant.
What I have learned so far is that fears are relative. What seems easy to you is hard as hell to the next person. To get inspiration to move forward, I often try to get my head out of my own ass and see life from another person's perspective. I've recently discovered a new online magazine, fear.less. You can find it (for free!) at http://fearlessstories.com/. It's content is completely dedicated to telling the stories of people from all walks of life who have overcome fear. They have survived! Not only that, they have flourished! It reinforced my belief that, in the broader context of life, some of the things that we choose to be afraid of seem kinda silly.
For instance, if you've grown up here in the U.S. and you talk to people that are from the poorer regions in places like Vietnam, Laos, Kenya, Rwanda or any country that seen the horrors of civil war, governments that change over night via bloody coups and that are policed by the military, it changes your perspective. There are people in the world that have faced death just for the opportunity to come to the U.S. They want to come to America for the chance to do the things that most citizens take for granted.
Recently, I made a commitment to do one thing a day that I find myself afraid of. Sometimes that means reaching out to certain people, inviting them to lunch, striking up a conversation. Whatever the case is, its an ACTION that I must take. I recognize that fear paralyzes you. It freezes you in the exact place you are, which is very often, right where you don't want to be.
Just last week, I reached out to someone with whom I have a very tenuous and nearly non-existent relationship. To protect the innocent, I'm not going to go into specifics, but my relationship with this person is important to someone that I truly love, so I thought I would offer an olive branch and invite them to lunch. Unfortunately, my offer was shot down. Not only was it refused, but in the end this person communicated that they didn't want to be bothered by me ever again. We both love the same person. I thought that would be enough for them to make at least a minimal effort to improve things between us, I was wrong. I left myself vulnerable & it hurt.
Now, I could decide that my efforts were useless and that I should just stick to my "safe zone". It was all in vain, right? Or was it? I reached out, it didn't work. Maybe, just maybe, I learned something here: This experience didn't kill me. My relationship with this person is not better, it actually may now be worse. But, I did it. I didn't really want to. I was afraid that it wouldn't be well received. It wasn't, but again, it didn't kill me. This person isn't going to hunt me down and destroy my life. It didn't work and that's OK. Maybe we'll never have a good relationship, that's OK too. I realized that I didn't let the fear of it not working keep me from trying.
One of my favorite movies is Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks. Here's a summary of the movie, according to the IMDB:
"Yuppie Daniel Miller is killed in a car accident and goes to Judgment City, a waiting room for the afterlife. During the day, he must prove in a courtroom-style process that he successfully overcame his fears (a hard task, given the pitiful life we are shown);...All of your life is on videotape -- or perhaps laser disk -- to make it easier on your prosecutor and defense attorney at Judgement City to randomly access a few episodes to show whether you made the most of the life you just completed. If you didn't make the most of that life, you will be sent back to try again and again until you do get it right."This movie is hilarious. I laughed the whole time. But there's a moral here: Don't let fear keep you from living. Living in fear of success, failure, disapproval or whatever your particular hangup is - it just keeps you unhappy. When I do something I'd normally avoid doing out of fear, a funny thing happens: I always feel empowered. Always. After I calmed down from the unfortunate episode from last week, I felt good. I'm glad I reached out - even if it didn't turn out the way I hoped. I stopped thinking of all the things that could go wrong and just went for it.
We've got to find a way to trust that whatever we are most afraid probably will not happen. Some religions call it "faith". If the thing you're most afraid of does happen, it probably won't kill you. Your life won't be blown to bits.
If it does kill you, well you'll be dead and you won't really care, will you?
