Slaying Your Fear Dragons
Let me get something out of the way. I’ve heard of bucket lists. I don’t like them. F-BUCKET LISTS. I find them incredibly morbid. I don’t want the idea of death to have so much power in my life. I want the idea of life to have power in my life.
Regardless of my inextinguishable cynical point of view, being present to all of the things you really, really, want to do, be, or see in your life, is a good and productive thing. Knowing what lights you up in life is the first step toward living a ‘lit-up life.’ Isn’t it?
The second step is running full-speed toward those things. And that may be the trickiest part. Many of our greatest hopes, potentials and aspirations are tightly guarded by our greatest fears. That’s built into the system of things. Perhaps for a reason.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Winning an Olympic Gold Medal is attended by the fear of losing in front of the whole world. Taking the last of your savings to launch your million-dollar dream business is attended by the fear of failure, poverty and embarrassment. Asking the most beautiful girl in the room to a date is attended by the fear of getting shut-down by the most beautiful girl of your dreams. Writing and releasing a hit song is attended by the fear of writing and releasing a public flop.
What does all of this mean? It means that the system of success and dreams-realized has an entry-level requirement; fear, and the toppling of it.
There is a doorway to success. Fear is the door. Fear must be approached. Fear must be opened. Fear must be kicked-down. Fear must be walked over, walked under and walked through. Then you must have your dog pee on it, for maximum insult to its injury.
Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
- George Addair
Think about it. You honor and celebrate all of the people who have lived life and done things that you, in someway, always wanted to do –– but were too afraid of even thinking of doing. So you celebrate them. But most of all, deep within, you really want some of their seeming stardust to rub-off onto you –– so you can soar in the space of your dreams as well. Is that not true? Don’t worry, it’s true.
The ONE, SINGLE, SOLITARY, UNANIMOUS distinguishable element shared by all of these celebrated people is that they are fear-conquerors. And while that is great, that is a map.
If you want to be where they are, how they are, and who they are, the road is clear. List every fear, unrealized dream and procrastinated item you are avoiding. Print them onto paper. And one by one, slay them like demons and dragons. Because, they are. They are the demons and dragons guarding the entry point to the life you’ve always dreamed of and the person you always dreamed of being. This is how fear initiates you into your greatness––as your struggles with your fears become your rites of passage––your passage to your personal greatness.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain
This is not a someday bucket-list of things you want to do before you morbidly die. This is a right now kick-ass and take names list to clench the life you deserve to live TODAY. I call it the fright-list and who-to-fight-list. Make yours and wage battle.
Go forward, kick-lots-of-ass today, tomorrow and forever.
Multiply.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
