I can remember when I was little being terrified that there were “monsters” in the back of our house…. so to slightly assuage my fear, I would send my sister, and fellow blogger, ahead of me. The theory here (in my 8 year old brain) was that if there were in fact monsters, she would absorb the damage first… I pretty much used her as collateral. Nice sister, huh? We laugh about it now (in fact it was story she used in her MOH speech at my wedding), but in life fear is a BIG deal! AND, the funny thing about fear is that it only perpetuates that which you fear the most. In the therapy field we refer to this as the two-factor theory of anxiety. I won’t go into the details, but basically, the more you fear a situation, a person, an object, or an activity, the more you will continue to avoid it. The sheer act of avoidance tells your brain that, indeed, the worst case scenario will happen, and therefor, you continue to avoid the “thing,” perpetuating fear.

This isn’t always bad though, right? I mean we need fear… there are scary things out there like rattle snakes and black widows, and I’m not discounting terribly tragic events people have gone through. BUT… there are things in life we fear that hold us back from our goals and a full enjoyment of life.

I’ll use myself. I am terrified of rejection. HATE it! I have tried to avoid it all my life in various ways and when we began to think about starting this blog the FIRST thought that popped into my head was “There are way too many ways to be rejected with this.” As I reflected though, I realized that the blog was something I really truly wanted to do. I was balancing several different potential “life choices” at this time and needed to give up one if I was going to throw myself into this blog. So I threw the fear aside, made the bold choice to step away from one of my other obligations (which provided a whole other area of fear… I won’t go into that one though), and blog away. You know what? It felt liberating… and that’s how I knew I could do this.

So thank you for being the avenue through which I face my fears on a daily basis. Every time we hit submit (whether or not I wrote the post for the day) I fear rejection… and every day I live through it, telling my brain that rejection is not to be feared…

What will you face today?

(P.S. The picture above is from our recent trip to Hawaii… it’s Allison jumping off the rocks… a fear she and I both faced on this trip (along with our 60 year old father!!)… and I had to face my near death invoking fear of sharks on my swim out there too!)