How many blog posts have you read already that promise and provoke you into making New Year’s Resolutions. Many make you feel awful if you hadn’t planned any or if you’ve already ‘fallen off the wagon’. I suppose its human nature to look at January as the time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Maybe its just a really easy way to say that last year hadn’t really lived up to your hopes from the beginning, so at least the opportunity to ‘start a new’ gives you the hope that things will be better this year. Perhaps the same psychological factor is at play here, when things don’t go as planned that we begin to unfurl the legitimate sounding excuses as to why we couldn’t do something and describe those absolutely realistic sounding hurdles at play in our lives. You’ve heard it many times “Even though I’m miserable, I can’t leave my job, I have bills to pay”, makes perfect sense and who would blame you for feeling this way. But I’m beginning to wonder if the question shouldn’t be “what happens if you don’t leave your job?” Now, this question is less about the life you want to lead, but more about how your current situation is slowly but surely having an impact and your complete dissatisfaction of doing work to the level that you are barely showing up, will inevitably ‘show up’ somewhere, somehow.
I’m exploring the idea of fear as perhaps the ultimate stumbling block to the life lived with purpose and meaning. Is it always only fear that keeps us back? Is it always only fear that stops us from leaping, especially into the unknown? Is it always only fear that dooms us to a life of mediocrity? I know one thing for sure, the excuses I give for why I haven’t completed what I thought I would, are often at the core, something to do with fear or bravery or guts.
In my “welcome to the New Year” post, I’m going to ask you to think not of the things you want to do this year or goals you want to accomplish but instead I want to challenge you to think about what your life will be like if you DON’T do those things. Picture that life for a moment and maybe, just maybe the fear of doing nothing and staying the same will outmaneuver the fear of taking the leap!
Here’s to lots of leaping!!