Find the Fear and make Big Scary things Happen in your Life
I’ve lost some of that reserve of energy I had. It is just so easy to be over run by the comfort and the routine but I’ve decided to stop. Yeah that’s right I’ve just decided to stop it in it’s tracks. That’s the beauty of it there are far more things in the world that will scare skid marks into your shorts than comfortable things. That’s probably why our minds hang onto those moments of comfort for so long, foregoing new experiences for the allure of unchanging blissful mediocrity.
If you want real and lasting change and deeply fulfilling life you’ve got to put yourself out there! You have to roll up your sleeves. I’ve learnt very little in my years on earth but I have learnt that fear exists only in your mind. Once you start with the doing your body gets involved very quickly catapults you through that layer of fear and excitement adrenaline and instinct take over. We are all survivors. We are all powerful. Thinking drains us of that power. Thinking stops us at the gate makes us doubt, makes us try when we should be doing. It makes us give up before when we’re moments from our goal.
I spent a lot of my life living like that until I realised that delaying living is suicide in small degrees. If we’re not in touch with our goals, our big goals, the ones that scare the living daylights out of us, then we’re busy dying, we’re not busy living.
Nut shelling it
So here’s what was wrong with my life in a single sentence, no wait I’ll go one better, in a single word. Nothing!
So here’s what was right with my life in yet another single word, Nothing?
Our lives exist in this moment, what happened yesterday has no bearing on the quality of now. If we want more from our lives we need to show up now. We need to do things now that make our lives better.
Keep Making it Better
I was swept along on the wave of excitement that has long since passed into the realm of comfort, I can knock out 2000 words in an evening easily if I want too. I’m getting the hang of all the blogging stresses. My life as Michael Fletcher, blogger, writer, artist and all round great guy is set in motion. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost the hunger again though. The hunger to make things happen, to challenge myself, to make a real connection with the outside world to make a difference in the lives of the people I care about. The big things, the things that mean something. So in order to arrest the malaise I’m tackling some of the big things. I’m making a positive effort to scare the bejeesus back into my life.
So how am I going to fix it all?
- I’m taking on one huge undertaking, I’m going to write a 50000 word novel in 30 days, oh how I wish November had 31 days. For more information click go to the NaNoWriMo site and have a look around the more fools that try this the merrier.
- To make it even more interesting I’m going on a road trip the first weekend of November which is the other big thing that I’ve not gotten round to doing long enough.
- Oh and there is a very good chance that I’ll be in Nigeria for up 2 weeks in November.
- Oh and in between that I’ll still be here discussing how to keep adding value to each others lives. I have given that some thought and this week I’ll be starting with more focused posts so I can start discussing my passion in greater detail to you.
Scary you bet but I’m not about trying, try is nothing I’ve decided I’m doing this and it will be done. I will probably be doing a NaNoWriMo weekly word count update or I’ll just add a widget to my sidebar so you can keep track of my progress.
Some Take home advice
If you think you’re happy you’re probably not. If you’re happy you’ve put some work into it and probably still working on it. When you’re happy you know it. So clap your hands.
Good Truly is the enemy of Great.
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Wow Michael – Way to push yourself. It’s good to force yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then it makes the difference between living and existing. I heard a saying once that was “the difference between a grave and a rut is the depth”.
Good luck on the novel.
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When will you sleep? 50,000 quality words in 30 days! Are you serious??? If you can do it, that’ll be amazing. I sincerely wish you all the best, Michael.
Gordie Rogers´s last blog ..Forgiveness Is Selfish.
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@Sean@build a website Indeed Sean and i find that these ruts increase in depth exponentially relative to our action or inaction. It still constatntly amazes me how many things I’ve accomplished that at one time thought was impossible for me. A week ago 50000 words scared me to death, a week on I’m actually more worried whether I’ll pick the right 50000 words.
Thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog.
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*gulp* Last year 130k people tried and only 26k succeeded. I found the idea really daunting at first until I thought about the alternative, which was ending up not writing my novel for another 5 or 10 years or ever like most people do. It works out to less than 2000 words per day which is actually considerably less scary than 50000 words and the NaNoWriMo community really do seem to be ultra supportive. They organize meets as well as moderate an email list so that the community can motivate each other and help people who are stuck. I was just really stuck and this is really what the docotor ordered!! Now I’m quite confident I’ll finish in time, whether this first draft will be any good or not, that’s another story completely.
On the sleep thing, I actually get by with 4 hours (sometimes less) sleep a day with no problems making it through my day job and if anything my health and energy levels the last year have been better than they’ve ever been. More on that in a future series of posts
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