When my younger sister was around three, I took her swimming. She’d just jump straight off the edge into the pool, arms and legs flapping in the air, not a worry in the world. Then one summer, out of the blue, same pool, same girl… she stood at the edge and couldn’t do it.
Something shifted in that one-year gap. Something told her that jumping in wasn’t OK anymore. What happened? As we grow, the concept of fear grows with us. It usually starts with innocent comments from the adults around us. “Watch out.” “Be careful.” Kids don’t know how to file those away for the one situation that needed them. They generalize. Suddenly the whole world needs watching out for.
So I’d give her a little encouragement. Hold her hand. Jump with her. Within minutes, she was fine again. Sometimes we’d have to do the whole thing all over the next day to get her back in.
And it doesn’t stop when we grow up. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find fear standing between you and a whole list of things you keep meaning to do. We rarely call it fear. That would be too honest. So we mask it.
The Masks We Give Our Fear
I let fear stop me from doing a lot of things, and the mask I wore was that I was “a shy person.” A friend once told me that was the biggest lie I told myself.
I didn’t understand her at the time. I didn’t know what she was talking about. The more I sit with it now, and see how that one small belief kept me out of so much fun, the more I know she was right.
We’ve all become experts at this. Instead of saying fear is stopping me, I say I can’t leave the job because I need a secure income. You say you can’t chase the dream because the money isn’t there. She says she can’t start the business she’s dying to build because there are three kids at home.
The real reason is fear. We cover it, we dress it up, we give it a respectable name. But peel the onion one layer at a time and there it is, looking you straight in the eye. That’s what’s really holding you back.
What Fear of Change Actually Costs You
Fear is probably the number one thing standing between people and their real lives. It’s what stops us from dreaming big and tapping into everything we’re actually capable of. Fear makes us live small.
And the price is high. There’s so much we miss when we let fear run the show. Life is no fun when you can’t jump into the pool and make a big splash.
They say your negative attitude about life is like a flat tire. If you don’t change it, you won’t get anywhere.
So let me ask you what I had to ask myself:
What would you do if you had no fear? If you decided to become whatever you wanted, fear and all… what would that feel like?
So I Started Jumping (Literally)
I decided to find out.
Throwback to a 60-foot pole I climbed in Fiji a few years ago. That’s around 20 meters. You climb it, you stand on top of this tiny surface, wobbling, and then you jump off into nothing. I could feel the butterflies come right back just writing this.
That jump wasn’t really about the pole. It was a stand-in for every scary thing I kept avoiding. And once I made it, something in me understood that I could face the others too.
Powered by Passion: Life Outside the Comfort Zone
I basically pitched a tent outside my comfort zone and lived there for a while. Everything exciting and wonderful and scary and alive happens out there. Trust me on this one.
In Fiji I met some of the best people I’ve ever known. I fondly call them my Fiji Family now. We were told to ask our team for support in whatever way we needed it. So I asked mine for one thing: if they ever saw me hesitating as I climbed that pole, shaking, about to talk myself out of it (as many others have done), they should cheer my slogan… powered by passion.
Let me tell you, hearing them shout it back at me was everything. It got me to the next step. And the next.
The Skydive, and Everything After
On the day I was flying home from Fiji, I had a 10-hour layover at the main airport. So I decided to skydive.
It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’d booked it a couple of days earlier. The logic was simple. If I can jump off a pole, the next reasonable move is to jump out of a plane. So I did. Then yet again in Dubai, for good measure.
The skydive, the pole, the firewalk I did back in 2012 (and yet again in 2014) … none of them were really about adrenaline. They were symbols. Proof. Each one shrinks the smaller, quieter fears I still have to face: the confrontation I keep dodging, the fear of failing, getting rejected.
Now there’s a little voice in my head. If I can throw myself out of a plane, why exactly am I so worried about this? If I can do that, what else can I do?
My life has changed with every challenge I’ve taken. I remember shivering in my pants and sweating through everything, looking completely ridiculous. And I’d do all of it again. It all seems impossible … until you do it. Then it’s a memory you hold fondly.
What’s Your Jump?
Back to my sister at the edge of the pool. All she needed was a hand to hold and someone to jump with her.
Most of the time, so do we.
Overcoming fear doesn’t mean the butterflies disappear. It means you jump anyway, butterflies and all.
So what’s your jump? What’s the hurdle you want to clear and leave behind for good?
