Fear: Beat it at its own game ...

Brave.
Courageous.
Great words.

I like ‘em.
Don’t’ you?
But, let’s be honest with each other. We only understand what they are if we acknowledge that we have stared into the flash-flame scarlet-hot eyes of - Fear.

I know Fear. I’d introduce you, but I’m sure you two have met before.
Now Fear and I, we have spent way too many hours glaring at one another.
We have yelled at one another across deafening black silence and hushing white noise.
We’ve tangled and wrestled ‘til both of us are battered and bloodied.
And I am only too aware the day will ne’er come when I will be completely free of my too familiar adversary, Fear.

People constantly look at one another and assume others are so much more “together” than they are. They don’t experience Fear.
I will assert to you, they may experience it differently, but they do experience it. Our friend Fear is a cross species experience. It is not something only you are held hostage by.
So as you read this, I believe you and I can look across this page at one another and know we are similar.
None of us is alone in this experience.
Every one of us has felt Fear.
Every one of us has known Fear.
Every one of us has lived in Fear.
Fear knows us and we know Fear, too well.

But, thankfully, we know the other side of the coin.
We may not always find the energy to move forward, make it through, push ahead, get it to happen, pull it out, go for it all, etc., etc.
But LOTS of times we do.
Lots of times WE DO.

And when we do we are COURAGEOUS. We are BRAVE.

You see despite the albatross around my neck with the tattooed moniker “Fear” upon its breast, I move forward in my life.
Each time I do I evoke the power of the word Courage.
I’ve learned from the wisdom of those who love me, I am “Brave”.
I have come to own the truth of this, painfully at times, I admit.
But I understand what it means to let Fear go, to beat Fear up, to push Fear aside.

Courageous.
Brave.
Are they words you’re comfortable with?
Are they words you attach to yourself?

Can you be with the thought of being “Brave?”
Or, of being Courageous?
Are these words you only offer to the behavior of others?

Courageous.
Brave.
Hold the words for a moment.

Now, move them closer to you.
Now a little closer, there, that’s good.

Let them belong to you.
C-O-U-R-A-G-E-O-U-S
B-R-A-V-E

I want you to recognize, as I take stock of often of in my world, you have lived your whole life moving past your fears.
You’ve started new jobs or opportunities, aware they seemed intimidating to you. That was courageous. That was brave.
You’ve opened your mind to original ideas and possibilities despite the fact you would have all new concepts to learn. You were courageous. You were brave.
Maybe, you’ll open your heart to someone you feel exciting feelings for even if you are afraid of getting hurt. This is courageous. This is brave.

To try. Courageous. Brave.
To expand. Courageous. Brave.
To give. Courageous. Brave.
To share. Courageous. Brave.
To love. Courageous. Brave.

To live. Courageous. Brave.

Stepping off the curb

I stepped off the curb this morning and in a moment I heard the sickening scream of brakes crushing to stop.

In the next moment I felt my world freeze inside me.

I was, in that moment, all I had come to be.
Every breath, every touch, every story,
every smile, every mystery, every wink, every role,
every joy, every adventure, every song, every tear….
I realized in that one moment I was, my history.

As if in a race, the next few moments began colliding on the stopwatch in my cognition; the car came to hard, tense rest, breathing heat inches from my taut, ready breath-caught form.

Now, as I sit here, with you near my page,

I write with the peace of mind I am intact, able to offer my complete body, mind, heart and energy to these thoughts.

Each of us steps off curbs of life’s offering each day.
We do this constantly unaware of what fate may hold for us.
What we do know, always, is we have no guarantee what’s coming around the corner.
All we can do is live as consciously as we are able.

Do we survive or do we strive?

Do we watch out or do we reach out?

Are we afraid of being hurt or are we open to love’s possibilities?

Will we only allow the outcomes we can foresee or will we accept the horizon’s amazing color changes as the day ages?

As I sit here, with you near my page,
I feel a deep and resonant space within me.
I experience it as the “well” of my experience.
It echoes.
It has, at times, a cavernous lonely sound.
How often we are surrounded by so many and so alone within ourselves.
Then other times, we long for this same space within us to be calmed by the quiet comfort of another with whom we can be still, hushed and safe.
Just longing for a space in time, when perhaps, the simple beauty of the eyes of another is the voice within our own inner landscape.

The “well” of my experience is vast.
Different in its diversity than your own, of this I am sure.
But the profundity of your life and my own is without question.
I speak with conviction unmovable.

I have in my various careers and roles, as a psychotherapist, a consultant, a CEO; the list goes on and on, worked with all types and demographics. The gamut of populations and the variations within them has been extreme. I’ve been lucky enough to have the double doors of my world rammed open wide by the breadth of ceaseless diversity that is the reality of our world. I have driven to the cliff of Knowledge and while I teetered on the edge I’ve seen the Truth:
DAMN, WE ARE PROFOUND!!!

Strangely, it is not unusual in presentations and trainings I give, for people to raise their hands and question, even refute my statements asserting the profundity of them and/or their lives.
I have to admit this saddens me.
To have people actively argue with me with a seemingly urgent need to convince me that they and their lives are “not profound” leaves me with an abysmal sadness.

But, this is not a light topic for me.
So I will not allow anyone to easily dismiss the quality and power of their own life.
We ARE profound, every one of us.

I will not refute that we CAN absolutely choose to neglect or reject our responsibility to ourselves and one another and therefore deny our profundity, but this does not make us any less profound.
It only makes us one who has placed our profundity on the shelf of inactivity.

But at any moment we can take our personal power off the shelf, dust it off and state with assertive initiative, “I’ve got important things to contribute. I’m necessary. I’m needed. I matter.”

We can be that person who accepts their “profound” truth:

Accept the truth of your own insight.
Accept the truth that you extend far below the surface of what others see of you.
Accept the truth of your personal intensity, which may or may not be hidden from others.
Accept the truth that you are more than what the world knows of you.
Accept the truth that the world has yet to see all you have to offer; you have more to give, more to share.

With my truest conviction, I implore you! Embrace your profundity.
After all, I have already embraced it for you.
It’s simply waiting for you to claim it. (I’m lovingly smiling at you right now……)

So, take it from me, you don’t need to wait for the moment when fate foreshadows your life’s finish line to make the choice to strive, to reach out, to be open to love’s possibilities or to accept the horizon’s amazing color changes as the day ages.

You only need to:

Choose to strive.

Choose to reach out.

Choose to be open to love’s possibilities.

Choose to accept the horizon’s amazing color changes as the day ages.

The definition of who I am is a constantly evolving process.
What about you?
How do you see your life?

For me, I kinda see my life like an amazing journey I feel lucky enough to be on.

It’s as if I’m on a path.
Mind you, it’s nothing as clearly defined as Dorothy’s yellow brick road.
No, it’s more like a caramel dusty lane.
It beckons my attention and demands my contemplation.
The allure of “what can be” up ahead pulls me ever onward.
My wonder at what awaits me around the bend just feels too much like magic to ever risk letting it be a paradise lost.
I lovingly succumb to the romance of the adventure.

I don’t just travel during the light of day.
Matter of fact, this journey I’m taking with you, well it’s 2:24am as I write this missive to you.
So you see, while I let the rising fair moon and chasing handsome sun function as record-keepers of my journey’s length, they don’t necessarily determine the beginning or end of any of the mission’s progression.

When I stop, there is purpose.
Aside from the urgings of sleep, which I’m sure, tap my shoulder far more often than I probably notice, there is beauty. Everywhere I look I see simply elegance and enriching depth in the people and places my path brings me to find. I am changed. I am more for what they offer me in word and deed.
I have been afforded many opportunities on my trek.
I have taken each I could bear the responsibility for.
I have labored and been accorded much favor.
I have also known much sadness, much loss.

And I have learned, my friend, you must cherish if you are lucky enough to see, the exquisite bloom of the lovely rose. For, too quickly and without warning she may leave you with only the memory of her comeliness. If you are fortunate perhaps another spring offers you her visage again. But if not, her delicate, velvet petals lay scattered in your hand, a testament to a treasure you only thought was to be ever yours.

I look to the sky and search the stars to trace my place on my path, my place in the world.
Where is Orion? There he is. The hunter reminds me I must seek to be courageous and hunt for what will continue to satisfy my longing for adventure and wisdom.
Where is Pegasus? I see him. The winged horse, he is urging me to always be moving forward.
Where is Andromeda? Alas, I see her. The chained maiden, she in her bondage is my beacon. She urges me, demands of me, to free those who seek to open their world to all that life offers, all life can be.

On I go, traveling my caramel dusty lane with a satchel of all needed internal resources, a magnifying glass for personal review, vast amounts of humor, more than my share of fascination for all things, hopefully at least a little bit of graciousness, a collection of tears, an abundance of fairness, plenty of smiles, maybe a tiny bit of charm and definitely enough “smarts” to realize that the more I learn the less I know…….