Feel the fear and do it anyway!

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” —Mary Schmich

I don’t know about you but just reading a sentence that says “do one thing every day that scares you” scares me.

Why would I want to purposely do something that scared me?

And not the don’t go into the basement cause there is a monster lurking kind of scared, but the oh @#*, I need to pay attention to the things stirring in me and move out of my comfort zone scared. You know the cozy place where we tend to spend most of our time in exchange for keeping risk to a minimum? Yeah, there.

And why would any of us want to leave the warmth and safety of something familiar and seemingly predictable? Because staying there means we’re not going anywhere and this gal for one, has places to go and life to experience!

Studies have shown that doing things that take you out of your comfort zone makes you more flexible, productive, and creative.

Taking on challenges can take you to new levels of achievement and opportunity. And how much happier could we be if we practiced facing our fears and explored going beyond them?

Fear seems necessary in certain circumstances, and no doubt if a bear was chasing me it would come in handy and motivate me to get the heck out of there! I mean testing the boundaries of fear so that it doesn’t limit my ability to expand my world and capabilities. Like extending an invitation to someone for fear of being rejected, or not trying something new because I might fail.

How many times in the past have I walked into a client meeting at a big network and heard the fears spring up in my head; you can’t compete they have “real” jobs, they won’t listen to you because you’re not hip, too old or dress weird, you can’t contribute because you’ll say the wrong thing? These and the fear of skydiving feel about the same!

So going forward I’m exploring starting with some little things to practice what a new relationship with an old fear can feel like. A workout program of sorts to exercise my risk muscle.

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