Fear and Courage

I just want to tell you about an extremely awesome conversation I have with my extremely awesome family this summer.

We had a discussion about fear.

Now let me tell you something about fear, I have literally let fear run my life.  I have always been afraid of not being good enough.  Been afraid of being friends and getting close to people for fear that they won't like me the way I do them.  Fear of being myself, for fear that people will find out who I really am.  Fear of getting out of my comfort zone.  Fear of Spiders.  Fear of getting hurt.

As a mother I am afraid of passing my fear onto my children.  Fear is a really real thing in my life, and I have always tried to hide from it.

This summer at a family reunion we have what we call a dialogue and I was asked to come up with the topic.  Naturally this scared me to death, what if they didn't like my topic?  What if no one talked? What if we just sat in silence for the entire hour? What if, What if, What if.  I came up with the topic of fear, and then I changed it, but I kept coming back to fear.

So as I introduced the topic, I was surprised at how much I had to say on the topic.

I have learned over these past few months about how much you can grow by getting out of you comfort zone.  I have done a lot of new things and guess what I haven't died once.  I even went cliff diving.

I have started doing a file of things that I do, and trying new things, and in this file there are two folders one says " I can't and I died" and the other says "I can and I lived".  Guess what I have nothing in the "I can't and I died" folder.  Do you know why?  Because everything I have done I have learned something from. 

During our conversation we talked about a lot of different things.  I found out that many of the people there had the same fears as I did, people that I never thought. 

We talked about how we are all afraid, but the courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.

I think that as we face our fears we realize that there really was never anything to be afraid of anyone.  I used to have a super duper fear of Spiders, and my husband would always say, "You are a million times bigger than it is,  You are not the one that should be afraid"  It is funny how the older I get the less afraid of them I am and the more annoyed.

So make a commitment to yourself that you will try one new thing a day.  Put yourself out there, and you will be surprised at how much you will grow.