This is a follow-up to a post yesterday about fear and how it robs us of our full potential and happiness. As I said in that post, every time you experience Fear it creates a space in your brain. If you face Fear, that space is filled with confidence and courage. If you walk away, that space is filled self-doubt and regret. – It was April 2013. I was sitting by myself eating dinner in Las Vegas when a thought crossed my mind. The thought was this: What if one day I push myself too far and actually get myself killed trying to finish one of my crazy adventures? To put this another way, it’s almost impossible for me to walk away from a challenge. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember the adventure that triggered these thoughts, but it really caused me to think.
As I said, I have this problem with target fixation. Once I decide to do something I am pretty much not going to quit until I achieve my goal. No matter the cost, I will finish. I’m not sure what it is, but once I’m engaged on a target, despite any logical or emotional feeling I might have, something inside of kicks in and quitting is no longer an option. What makes this issue even worse is that the closer I get to achieving my goal, my ability to stop decreases. For example, this past summer I was with my son and some coworkers at a water park. They have four slides with a launch platform that extends about 60 feet in the air. It took us close to 45-minutes on-line to reach the launch platform. The park was packed that day. Of course, we were going off of the most extreme slide of the four called The Royal Flush. As I look around, there were no 50+-year-old, fat, bald guys in line. Just a bunch of young flat-bellies. This slide begins with a near vertical drop, then it launches you into the air about 20-feet high and about 30-feet out. It’s crazy! As I reached the point that there were about 5 people in front of me in line, everything in my mind said, “Chris, don’t do it. It’s gonna hurt.” I stayed in line, but I really didn’t want to. My son, Jason, was with me. He’s a 23, and a machine gunner in the Marines. As another person ahead of us went off the slide, I started sharing my fears out loud. Jason and my coworkers encouraged me to go. “It’ll be fun and over in 2-seconds,” they said. I stayed in line. My stomach was in knots. Jason was ahead of me. I didn’t want to go. I watched as he sat down on the edge of the slide. As I said, the first part of the slide is so steep imagine sitting in a chair and pushing yourself out of the chair and onto the floor. This is essentially how you begin your ride. As I stood there, I watched Jason disappear over the edge and then reappear sailing wildly through the air and into the water below. As I walked up, my mind was screaming at me, “Don’t do it! Stop!.” I was shaking, my vision was getting blurry, my heart was racing, and I could even feel my lower jaw doing some sort of involuntary spasm. All of that involuntary craziness going on and I still sat down and pushed myself over the edge. It was over in the blink of an eye. Did it hurt? Yeah, a little. Was it worth it? Hell yes. It was a blast. Here is a video of my slide on The Royal Flush.
I just said all of that to say this. Fear stops us from doing so many things. It prevents us from reaching our full potential. The more you face your fear, the better you will become at breaking through your own personal fear barriers. You have to learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable. “Embrace the suck,” as my Marine son says. Growth and comfort do not coexist.
To bring this discussion back full-circle to where I began. So what if one day I do ignore all of the warning signs and get way on over my head? Well, it does scare me a little, but as Helen Keller said, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
So what about you? Are you playing it safe or are you facing your fears. It doesn’t have to be something like I just described. It could be walking into your boss and asking fro a raise and more responsibility. It could be getting up the courage to make more sales calls. It could be enrolling in college despite being older than most college freshmen. Whatever it is, I promise that all of those awful outcomes you imagined in your head will most likely not happen. As Twain said, “Do the thing you fear most, and the death of fear is certain.” You thought I was going to mention that other Twain quote, “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” When it comes to fear, Twain knew what he was talking about. Don’t let Fear stop you from living your life.
In closing, I’ve had a many times in my life where I gave up due to fear. In these instances, I failed to push through moments of discomfort and pain in order to achieve a goal. In retrospect, I have found that the regret associated with quitting and not reaching my goal was multiple times worse than the pain and discomfort I most likely would have endured had I stayed the course and achieved my objective. You just have to have the guts to push yourself over the edge. Don’t be afraid to jump.
I hope you Find Your Adventure and Live Your Life.
PS – This weekend I will be taking my daughter out for some more total commitment high adventure. It is going to make for an awesome story. Since she is now 18, I can stop worrying about C.P.S. showing up at my door and arresting me for child endangerment. This will be a day she will never forget.
PPS – To the boys interested in dating my daughter, you better be confident and bring your A-Game. You’re going to need it. She’s a total bad-ass.