Some people are born without fear. They can charge towards something without a second thought.
I am NOT one of those people.
Don’t get me wrong, I still finish whatever I start. But that doesn’t mean when I’m about to climb a mountain (real or metaphorical), I don’t stand at the bottom and get vertigo seeing how far away the top is.
If I want to get up that mountain, I’ll do a gut check and realize that the distance is really just an accumulation of steps. “I can do steps,” I’ll tell myself. “I can break it down and make it 300 ft to that rock.” After I get to that rock then I figure, “I can make it 500 ft to that tree.”
Before I know it, I’m half way. But I’m tired. More likely than not I have a few blisters and the path down is looking pretty good because I don’t want to take another step. Here’s a secret though…
Running away and quitting in the middle has just as many steps back down as going forward to the top. And there’s no way I hauled my butt up half a mountain just to pack in my trail mix. So as long as I can keep moving, it’s going to be up.
One of the keys to fighting fear is making a commitment that there’s no turning back. Because as long as I see heading back down as an option, I’ll keep nervously looking over my shoulder at the possible way out. Once I choose to take away that option, something miraculous happens: peace. Peace and determination that all I have to do or think about is taking those steps forward.
Whether its easy, hard, slow or fast — doesn’t matter. Just get there and enjoy the view from the top. It’s much better than the one from the bottom.
