Sometimes you look at an opportunity that lies before you and, for a moment, the excitement of possibility courses through you; you feel alive and almost giddy with the thought of everything you could do. And then the doubts creep in. You start to wonder if maybe that golden opportunity is too good to be true. You think there has to be a catch somewhere. And then you start to think that maybe you’re not ready for it yet, maybe it’s beyond your current capabilities. Then you start to get scared; what if you can’t pull it off? What if you give it your best shot but you mess it up anyway? So then you start to panic; what if you fail and make an absolute fool of yourself and everyone laughs at you and says “I told you so”?
You’ve decided, before you’ve even taken the first tiny step forward, that it won’t work. Before you’ve even begun, you’ve doomed yourself to failure. Don’t beat yourself up over it – it happens to everyone at some point in their journey. The loss of a specific opportunity isn’t the concern here; the bigger issue is the reasoning behind why you let it go.
There is freedom waiting for you,
on the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?
~Erin Hanson
If you want to achieve great things in your life, you have to realize that you won’t be great at it right out of the gate. No one is. You learn from experience, as you go. And you have to give yourself permission to make mistakes and be a beginner. You have to be willing to be bad at something. You have to be willing to completely suck at it… because how else are you going to learn? You have to be willing to fall flat on your ass and then pick yourself up and keep going, as many times as it takes, because that’s when real success happens.
You can either choose to stay on your nice safe branch, or you can take the chance to put yourself out there. Yes, you might fall… but on the other hand, what if you fly?
photo credit: pixabay.com cc
This is so timely. Was thinking this very thing today and I was going to post that people do not burn bridges and cling to whatever past they have and whatnot, just in case, when masters tell us otherwise. If you want to be great, you totally forget about the past, burn those bridges and move forward. Step off the ledge with the faith that it will work out anyway. OK, it may take time, and you won’t get it perfectly at first, but hey, it will all come together.
That is why I am so glad that one billionaire pointed out that her father, while growing up, made her not be afraid of failure. Since that fear was not there, she tried things and went with gut feelings and such and it all lead to the spanx company. That was truly inspiring. In my house, if you accidentally spilled a glass of liquid, you were hit. So, there you go, lots of beliefs to let go of there that are not even my own. yup, I am getting to the bottom of this 😉
I’m of two minds about the whole burning bridges thing. On the one hand, I don’t think there is anything wrong at all with playing both ends to the middle; for example, keeping the job you hate because it gives you the peace of mind of a steady paycheck, while pouring your heart and soul and every extra ounce of energy you have into building your dream in your off-hours. Also, there’s no sense breaking off connections that could be helpful to you later on. On the other hand, there’s a saying I came across a while back that really resonated and it said that sometimes burning bridges is a good thing because it keeps you from going back to a place you were never meant to be in the first place. And I do think there is a lot of truth in that. I think it’s something each individual, in each particular situation, has to decided for themselves. But either way, keep working towards the dream.
In any case, I agree that we definitely need to work on letting go of our fear of failure. I think it’s one of the biggest things that holds people back from really committing to their bigger dreams and goals. And without that commitment, it’s not going to happen. I don’t think you can half-heartedly make great things happen in life.
Nathalie, with all this stuff going on and the fact that we need to learn this stuff through experiences and our heart, does it not give cause for concern for the Creator that we would go crazy and have all these problems finding ourselves and the path? Or, is this question arising because I am looking at it through my human perspective? Source energy merely skewed a few degrees a certain way, gave birth to duality and from then on, we have to find our way back to it? Is this part of the physical we are here to experience? Source gave us our emotional guidance system as a tool to use to navigate this reality and, when connected to it, the better off we are. I guess It would not be concerned about us losing it because it would not really “know” about it, so to speak. My understanding is that it lacks perception and looks to us to provide perception and thus expansion. So, through our guidance we would find a way not to go crazy, right?
This is a bigger topic I was just wondering about. Since we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, we need to experience it in all its facets, even the dark, bad stuff? I know we choose this, but if we were not guided by masters and the like, would we figure this out on our own eventually? Hmmm, most probably.
Source does not have feeling, it just is. It is peace. Not sure how it is love, since that is a feeling, but, it is pure love, as it is unconditional. It is not human-like., It is spirit. The human part is what is experienced here, which I guess source did not give a second thought about. If we are going through a lot, we can always let go and see what happens. That is connecting with source again instead of being pinched off from it.
I guess in our nature we know all this, but we forget along the way and the important thing is to find it again.
I don’t imagine source energy would have problems with this, as we all go back to the same place anyway. Also, we are part of source, so it’s not possible for us to ever be completely cut off from it.
There is no judgement from source. All experiences are valid and have value. Even the “dark, bad stuff”. Maybe it’s just that we can’t see it from our perspective because we’re in it, so the bigger picture isn’t available to us at present.
There is a great deal that we forget when we come here, because we chose to forget it. It’s part of the experience and adventure of being human. If you haven’t read Mike Dooley’s book, Infinite Possibilities, I highly recommend it… he does a really good job of explaining, in a really accessible way, what we’re all doing here.