This is What the Moment of Smashing Fear in the Face Feels Like
You’ll never really know how great it feels until… ya know, you actually do it.“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
I started putting content out for public consumption several years ago.
Then I stopped.
I was writing sports, one of my passions, but what I really wanted was to write more for myself. And in so doing, I’d write for millions. But I was scared to death. The personal, the emotional, the visceral ways that I felt, that I knew deep-down others could benefit from, were still not ready to come out of me. I had a lot of to overcome.
My own demons.
My worries.
The fears of what others would think.
My own bullshit image in my head of who I thought I was, which was truly contradictory to who I really was. And yet somehow, that force of Resistance, was holding me still in my own purgatory. After a move away from New York, and into a professional and personal unknown in a new place, with a young family, I cracked.
Depression.
Anxiety.
Doubt.
Insecurity about a lot of who I had become, and what I thought was great about me. But, like all low points, all moments of adversity and temporary lost hope, I climbed out of the doldrums and began to realize that my calling — my purpose — was still right in front of me. Broken, though I was, I felt a powerful urge to finally start writing.
I found my writer’s voice once I realized I was writing to people who were dealing too much with fear, just like me. I realized, like Robert Collier once famously said:
“In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.”
Starting a blog, growing on Medium and putting my writing out there for the world to read, it gave me an endless source of inspiration. This positive momentum and fire propelled me forward and imbued my writing with color and passion that I didn’t even know was possible. I smashed fear in the face, and it felt like an out-of-body experience.
It felt magical and through my own self-satisfaction, and validation from others, I knew I had to keep going. If you know what I mean, and you’ve been there yourself, please, take these two words from me as gold:
Keep Going.And never stop.
Highs and LowsPeople don’t like to admit failure or mistakes. Rarely do we see it in public, even in this age of vulnerability and candor. Despite those curtains that we open for the world to see about our own idiosyncracies or areas that make us unique, we’re still enormously guarded about letting others into our weakest moments. Our failures.
When in reality, this is where we’ve grown — and gone on to triumph the most.
Some people never own up to their mistakes or shortcomings, certainly not publicly. Worse yet — not even to themselves. This is a lack of honesty and accountability. It takes us further away from our authentic selves. We learn over time that in order to overcome our own fears, and to continue to win life’s biggest battles, we need to move directly toward our own authenticity and uniqueness.
On social media, it’s extremely rare to for people to share losses or shortcomings. And I’m talking about even a bad picture or minuscule blemish that may actually offer a candid opening into that person’s true self that others are able to identify and vibe with. We find out in hindsight that one person’s vulnerability and courage saved someone else’s life!
And yet, more often than not, we only see these breakthrough moments in limited quantity. To the detriment of all of us.
So many of us try to bring attention to ourselves in our best light — through the prism of our successes. We’re afraid other people may have a diminished opinion of our mistakes.
The best thing we can do is keep putting ourselves out there, smashing fear in the face both privately and publicly. There’s the feeling of self-satisfaction that comes for OURSELVES, when we express our most authentic being. There’s also the validation that comes publicly from being recognized for your achievement.
Only in the past 6 months have I started posting videos for consumption to the public. I’ve mostly used Linked in as my platform.
