Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “as soon as things slow down, or I get past X, Y and Z, I’ll get to that dream I’ve been putting off?” Or worse, frustrated by your own inaction and the limited beliefs you’ve inflicted on yourself, you abandon your dream…“just for now.” With a promise to get back to it once it feels more like “the right time.”
You’re not alone.
The fear of failure is the greatest barrier to success.
Sometimes, it’s easier to stay stuck where you are, than to follow your heart to a place that feels a little uncomfortable.
See, your brains doesn’t want you to be happy. It wants to keep you safe. The only hope you have for rising above that, is YOU.
How you show up for yourself should be as unconditional as how you show up for the people you care about. What are you doing each day to be your own trusted support on the ground?
When you finally find the courage to show up as your best, authentic self, you can trust that you’ll eventually find yourself surrounded with people who do the same. It’s about trusting that when you make it your business to build yourself and other people up (as opposed to tearing them down) you’ll find yourself in the best company.
If you want to be happy, effective, successful, connected, and constantly moving the needle on the goals in your life, you have to create an environment that involves some risk. Without it, you’re going to stay right where you are.
When I held my nose and jumped into creating Campowerment, with nothing but blind faith that my burning desire to do this outweighed my fears, I took my cues from Elphaba, the fictional witch in the Broadway show Wicked, whose powerful hit song moved me to defy gravity, too (while my kids made fun of me for finding inspiration in a show we saw a decade earlier!).
And so I left a big job as a journalist to shift gears and build my dream, without a blueprint. One of the things that first drew me to Malibu was the magnificent ropes course, overlooking the Pacific. But 17 camps in, I never climbed not even one of those poles. Because I told myself some BS story about why I couldn’t. I didn’t show up to the ropes course very often, because everyone gave me a hard time about it. And my chickenshit retort was always the same: “Wasn’t Campowerment enough of a leap?”
But it wasn’t, clearly.
And while I continue to learn how important it is to keep raising the bar on my life, it wasn’t til the camp we called home for so many years was struck by the Woolsey Fire, that I regretted my wimpiness. My hard work and blind faith helped gave countless women the opportunity to push themselves to new heights, and climb 50 feet up to face that crazy beautiful horizon where the ocean meets the sky, surrounded by a community I had created for this purpose: to be there for each other. Meanwhile, I chose to stay safe on the ground. Seventeen times. What I would give for one more chance.
Today’s takeaway: We never stop moving forward, unless we allow ourselves to. Tell your brain to shut it, because now is your time. See you on the ropes in Ojai
