I keep telling myself that it’s okay to be afraid.
And in the same breath, I always say, “But you don’t have to stay there.”
It’s like there are these dancing shadows that distract me and make everything in me contract. I become a version of myself that isn’t in its fullest. It’s scared. It’s upset. It’s angry.
It’s not really me at my best at all.
That sentence…”But you don’t have to stay there” is all about me making a choice. I think I know very well what comes up for me when I decide to live in fear, indecision, doubt and worry. Everything feels panicked. My gut tightens up and I can feel the pressure starting to come down on my shoulders.
That’s when the fear loves to grip me.
That’s when it gets me.
I realize that I have to make the decision to move through it.
The second I start moving away from it, I feel even more conflicted and scared. It’s like a dark wolf chasing after you and you have that panicked feeling that it’s just about to get you. The longer and longer you let that be there, the worse and worse it’s going to get.
These dancing shadows are nothing more than your mind playing tricks on you.
Distractions.
Sometimes they blow up to be a far bigger size than they are. Sometimes they shift and change on you and surprise you in different ways.
But they are just shadows. They are things that take you away from your true core. That core is goodness. That core is love.
I think for a long time I fell into this place of being comfortable. It’s not that this place is a bad place to be – who could ever complain about being comfortable? But that’s not where most of my growth has ever happened. That’s not a place that has helped me expand, understand, challenge myself and move into something that’s bigger than who I was at the moment.
Traveling, for me, is one of the ways I’m going about this expansion.
I’ve kept myself in the same place for a long time and it’s time that I branch out and really begin to discover the rest of the world. I’ve grown in so many ways here, but now, it’s time for me to grow in other areas as well. Just as you grow out of your old clothes when you’re young, your soul grows out of old situations, people, places and things as you continue your development.
So I guess that’s where I am right now.
I’m at this place of knowing that I need to make these big changes in my life, having taken the step to accept that “knowing,” and now getting ready to take off in every sense of the word.
Fear will crawl in…
But I have to continue to settle.
If I show up here the fear seems to exit right out the door.
So here I will be.
What better place?
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project