Today I rode down the rutted hill that had beat me time and time again. One fall and I was scared for months, choosing to dismount and walk down the hill instead of conquering the fear. I had had many opportunities to push past the scared voice in my head, but no matter how much I coached my inner little girl “You can do it, trust the bike”, I would get to the point of no return and stop. I reached the terror barrier.
Anytime we are trying to push past a fear, or to get out of the comfort zone, it starts with a thought. For me, it starts with a floating little thought that I end up latching on to and thinking more about. Thoughts like “I think I want to open another location”, or “I think I want to start running again”, or “I think I’d like to learn to be a speaker”. There are thoughts like these floating around in my head all the time, but until I actually focus on one, and begin to percolate it in my mind, they will float around like clouds in the clutter of my head. Once they have made it into my conscious awareness, they start to nag. They come up and remind me at the most inconvenient times that they are there, times like 4 am. Or 10 pm, as I am trying to get some shut eye.
After I have mulled over a thought, or a great idea I think I have, eventually I say it out loud. I blurt out “I am writing a book”, or “I am going to conquer that hill”, and now it’s official. As long as it was in my head it was safely esconced in the dream category, but once I verbalized it- yikes. The snowball effect. I think about it more, get excited, start researching and doing and planning…then WHAM! Some well meaning friend or loved one plays devils advocate and asks a question that plants a seed of doubt in my mind. I have even done it to myself, time and time again. I am really good at talking myself into AND out of anything subject in the book. My list of pros and cons goes on to infinity for any given idea. This is the inevitable Terror Barrier. It is the point when we reach when our conscious mind rejects the new thoughts that are threatening the status quo. This is where we step back into safety, we decide it is too risky, or too hard, or a dumb idea, or even better, “I never really wanted to do it anyway”. The conscious mind is our ambassador for stagnation. It does not want us to step forward into growth, instead it convinces us to fall back into safety.
We start feeling fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, and we think this is our signal to reverse, turn around, head back to the bunker. What if instead those emotions we are so uncomfortable with that they send us running back to mama instead were the mind’s way of telling us “Hey, get ready! Its time to expand your limitless potential and grow!” This is the beginning, or the middle, or the process of freedom. Freedom from falling victim to fear, freedom to do anything you imagine, freedom to have the exciting life you want. So that hill. Even knowing all this that I know, the hill was a real thing that I had really fallen on and there was a real possibility I would fall again, but I didn’t. I went for it, and I did it again, and I succeeded. And it felt GREAT!