Woke this morning and fear was staring me in the face. It was a cold stare — one that chilled me to the bone. The alarm had just gone off and the clock glowed 4:02 a.m. Fatigue walked around fear and held me down on the bed. I struggled to get out of bed.
But I did.
See, fear is the devil walking this earth. It lies to you. It seduces you. Sure, sometimes it is a good thing — you don’t want to dive off your roof or shoot bottle rockets at your face. But a lot of times it tries to take over. It whispers in your ear that it is OK to quit. It tells you that you’re tired. It convinces you that you will fail. Fear sucks the breath out of your dreams. You’re left alone in your comfort zone to wither and die.
So I put both of my feet on the floor and went to my bootcamp. It was a tough day and I struggled because of many things on my mind. But at the very end, when we had four 100-yard runs, I got in a footrace with fear. And I’m proud to say, I left it in my dust.
For five years, I’ve faced some pretty big uncertainty. But that uncertainty has led to amazing rewards. I think about that when I get that familiar knot in my stomach. I take deep meditative breaths and plan to do the very thing that fear hates the most: I get busy.
Just like I did this morning. I got busy. At 4:02 a.m., fear tried to stare me down. And I’m proud to say, it blinked first.