Peeking Through the Clouds
Hello, and thank you so much for reading!
I am super excited to start my journey as an official blogger, but also incredibly nervous. It almost feels like one of those dreams where you're walking into school naked, and though every fiber of your being is screaming for you to stop, cover up, and/or run, you keep walking forward. So, here I am peeking through the clouds, fully dressed in person, but unveiling my naked soul, in hopes to recycle that which inspires me, to inspire you, so you may inspire others.
What better way to start this blog than to talk about this fear of exposure?
This fear supplies the very roots of our procrastination. Procrastination does not come from a place of exhaustion, but from a place of insecurity. Because, what if people don't like me? Or what if I fail?
Well, let's answer our own 'what ifs'.
Will we die? Will it cripple us? Typically not, unless we're feeling Evel Knievel-ish in our endeavors. Honestly, not trying kills our energy and cripples our spirits.
What will happen if any or all of our 'what ifs' come to be? The same thing that happened when we fell off our bikes as children, and when we experienced our first heartbreak, and the last time things simply did not work out the way we planned. It hurt, but we survived, and we learned.
When the 'what ifs' start crippling us, reverse them. What if I don't go for it? What if I hide?
The answers to those questions sound way more frightening. Honestly, even the prospect of death does not sound as bad as the idea of eternal complacency.
Zig Ziglar asks the question perfectly: "Will you look back on life and say, 'I wish I had,' or 'I'm glad I did'?" This question separates those who succumbed to fear and those who overcame it. This question is the very reason I am peeking through the clouds, slowly exposing my fears and my dreams to the world, rather than spending another 10 years talking myself out of expanding my reach as a writer.
Consciously filling my life with inspirational light, from everything including good books and incredible people, is making me lighter. Fear doesn't survive in the light, because then you can see how unauthentic that feeling really is. So, though I feel afraid, I am courageous. And I am writing because of that realization.
People won't always like me, and I will mess up- how many don't and how much I slip will serve as my gauges for how hard I am pushing myself.
What about you? Does what you do scare the hell out of you? If not, you might be living a safe, complacent life. I catch myself doing just that more often than I'd like to admit. But please, do me a huge favor and reduce my fears by giving this mission of mine purpose: let this post inspire you to also bravely peek through the clouds! Turn something that you want to do into something you're doing. Trade procrastination for productivity!
As Lao Tzu said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Please take that one step with me today- not tomorrow, or whenever it is you think you'll feel ready, but right now, because I could really use some company.
