Stare Down Your Fear

It’s all good and well to say break free from the shackles of the time sheet, embrace your potential, live your dream. It’s easy to imagine that we can do what we love every day.

But by golly it is frightening. When your dream sits atop a seemingly insurmountable mountain and the path beyond is full of boogeymen and uncertainty.

In my dream, the life I imagined was balance: to practice corporate law and still take my children to swimming lessons and read them bedtime stories. It was a humble dream, but there it was – way above me on that mountain top, with goodness knows what scary uncertainties on the path between.

This fear of the unknown path is one of the many reasons why some of the greatest entrepreneurial journeys begin when the road behind is closed.

For me this was true.

For too long I had heeded the voices of doubt as they whispered…

“It is too far.” “It is too dark.” “It is too scary.” “Go Back!”

Then, at 32 weeks pregnant with my second child I was made redundant. With two small children, I realized the path behind was closed to me and so I looked up.

The path was ominous and the mountain was looming, but there above, glowed the life I loved.

Eleanor Roosevelt said “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

And so, that’s what I have been doing. I’m living the life I dared to imagine by staring down one boogeyman at a time.