The only way to get there is to start here.
What do you need to know to get moving? If you’re like me, you want to see the entire road before you, know every turn, anticipate every problem, plan every solution and try to be one hundred percent sure of each possible moment.
The more I know about the pathway beyond, the more comfortable I feel about the experience. It sounds like I’m being thorough right, trying my hardest, doing my best?
And yet it’s really what’s holding me (and possibly you) back.
Because the greatest things in life are the things that you are NEVER one hundred percent ready for. When I left my birth country of England to start a new life in America, I had only a concept of a direction for my life, and it’s turned out very differently than I expected.
When Holly and I were married, we had no idea how everything was going to work. When we made the decision to start a family, we were completely oblivious to how that was going to turn out.
We just set sail for our destination, and started to move.
Which is easier when you’re starting out. The less you have to lose, the easier it is to gamble a little on the fickle winds of fate, and to move forward with confidence.
But little by little, as we gain more of a ‘life’ and we lose more and more of our ‘time’, it becomes more daunting to take those big steps out into the universe. We prefer to stay safe, warm, hidden and protected.
And if we are not careful, we hibernate into infirmity.
We lose some of the spark of life that provided us with so much passion and energy when were younger. Instead, we settle for security when we could be progressing through a realm of passionate possibilities.
We give up all that we could experience for the imagined safety of a minimal endurance, and set our feet to standing, when we could be running.
All because we are afraid.
It has been written that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will, and it’s true. If we struggle with the unknown (which is really just the possibility of failure) and allow our fears to persuade us into paralysis, we miss out on the very spark of life that gives us meaning, that of facing the unknown.
The very best inside of us often requires a challenge to come forth, and we’re never going to find out how good we are until we set ourselves to walking on the uncharted pathway.
Trusting ourselves that we can deal with whatever comes our way.
So today, I offer you these words as a plea for you to embrace the journeys that you want to start upon, but have been holding back out of a fear of not knowing every step. You will never know everything that you need to know, but you can discover along the way the things you really need, and can discard those you really don’t.
This journey is not for the faint of heart, but for the faithful of courage, for it is the pathway to excitement, adventure and fulfillment.
So what are you waiting for? The only way to get there is to start here.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings