What Would You Consider Doing that Really, Really Scares You?

I have to give credit where credit is due, and my bff, Beth, came up with this post idea. She and I were in NYC for three days this week with her youngest son, Ben (age 7), and we had a wonderful time visiting with my oldest son, Josh (age 25). (NO--THAT IS NOT JOSH IN THE PICTURE!!!)

NYC is a carnival ride on steroids (note the Naked Cowboy strutting his stuff in Times Square), and when I told Beth that I wanted to write something using photos from our trip, she suggested this topic. Plenty of people in Manhattan seem to be pushing boundaries that most of us won't ever cross (check out  both of the photos included in this post), and the topic definitely resonated with me because I have grappled my whole life with the issue of fear.

As a child, I was incredibly shy and many things scared me. My sister Amy would eagerly offer to do all the things that I found scary. If my parents asked me to run into a store and pick up mouthwash  for them, I'd hesitate and Amy would jump up and run in ahead of me. As a teenager, my social life suffered significantly because of my fear of unfamiliar social settings and risky(read: NORMAL TEENAGE) behavior. Most egregiously, my aversion to risk made me a prisoner in a bad marriage for too many difficult years.

Which leads me to one of the most significant moments in my life, a dream that specifically addressed my paralyzing fears. I was riding a bicycle in a strange town that was undergoing massive construction. At one point, I made a sharp turn to avoid something (a truck, a pedestrian, I can't remember), and I ended up riding suspended over a giant chasm. Since this was a dream (isn't our sub-conscious amazing?), I was aware that I was literally hanging in mid-air about to drop down to my death. At that moment, a person appeared on the other edge of the pit and proceeded to try to guide me to safety. His words have served as a sort of mantra for me in the ten years since I had that incredible dream. He yelled, "Lunge Forward!" When I woke up the next morning, I had an epiphany; I understood that shifting all of my weight in a new direction would actually move me away from danger. It saved me in the dream, and it saved me in my life as well.

I am a work in progress trying each day to expand the limits of my comfort zone. Like me,  Noelle Hancock, a young writer on the brink of turning 30, realized that she was being held captive by her fears. Hancock decided to take Eleanor Roosevelt's advice and "do one thing every day that scares you." Ms. Hancock proceeded to catalog her adventures in a new memoir entitled, My Year with Eleanor, where she recounts taking fighter pilot lessons, swimming with sharks and doing stand-up comedy. I don't think our risks have to be quite so dramatic; we might try a food we used to hate, learn Italian, take a Spinning class, etc. You never know where you will go (or how you will grow) if you push past your fears! Please comment about something that scares you that you are working to overcome and don't forget to LUNGE FORWARD!