“It’s ok to do things scared,” Bruce B.  I love that this followed my talk on fear yesterday.  I want to share this brief follow up because it’s clearly a message we need to share right now, especially if the topic came up two days in a row.  We need to know that it’s ok to do it scared.  I once wrote about how the body can’t neurologically tell the difference between scared/nervous and excited.  So that means so much of what determines how we move forward is how we interpret what our brains are telling us—how we decide to label what we are feeling in that moment.  This is another key reason why it’s so important to really connect with ourselves and learn what our bodies are telling us—to discern between discomfort, fear, and excitement—and to learn how to trick ourselves into feeling one of the higher level emotions.  If the positive and negative are so closely aligned neurologically, then it’s only a matter of deciding how we want to feel in that moment. 

The other side of doing things scared is having faith in our own abilities.  Often times we think we need to be perfect at something to do it or to voice an opinion on it.  Like if we aren’t an expert, we aren’t allowed to say anything on the matter—or try it.  The truth is we learn through sharing ideas and inklings of things.  Just as often as we think we need to be perfect, we hinder ourselves because of our own interpretations of who we are.  For example, we think people won’t accept us as an authority or a resource on something because we are too short.  In those cases we need to remember that we have no confirmation of what people truly think of us and we aren’t meant to.  We are meant to know ourselves and decide that we are going to move forward, that we are able to do what we set our minds to.  I know for me I have to throw in the issue with ADD because we lose faith in ourselves when we don’t follow through on things because we are trying to do all the things at once.  I’m learning to give myself grace in those moments and try to train myself to focus on one thing.  But I still do the thing.

We can’t get discouraged if we don’t feel like the lion in the moment.  We have to tell ourselves that our progress is ours alone and that a single step is all that it takes to keep us going in the right direction.  We can’t progress on all things at the same time at the same rate.  We are meant to focus on one thing and take the time to develop that skill, develop our confidence until we can do the next thing.  So don’t be afraid to start with one thing.  Don’t be afraid to not know everything about that one thing.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward.  Allow ourselves patience and grace and acceptance of who we really are, trust that we are guided and that we will find the answers we need—and then do the thing.  Even if we aren’t able to tell ourselves that we aren’t scared and manage to move forward, then we need to do it anyway.  Don’t let our minds play tricks on us so we fear what we need to do—just do it.  It gets easier all the time until the thing is done.