If You Weren’t Afraid…

It’s one of the most irritating personal development questions I have ever encountered. Yet it is also one of the most immediately actionable.

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

What irritates me about this question is the assumption that there is fear in my life and that fear is holding me back from taking action in some way. What irritates me even more is that any time I have been honest about the question, I have been able to uncover a fear that is restraining me in some way.

It’s usually not a major fear like fear of death or crashing in a plane, but it is significant enough that it is keeping me from doing something I ought to do. Right now, as I do a quick scan over my life I see the following:

• Sluggishness in finishing the back cover copy of my next book for fear that it won’t be quite right
• A reluctance to have a difficult conversation with an individual who needs to be challenged about their conduct
• An ingrained tendency to “read more” and try to learn everything there is to know about a given subject (an impossibility) before I make a business decision

In the past fear has kept me from larger life decisions, that once made, were the source of immediate growth and greater effectiveness. With my wife Kristin’s help and partnership we have pretty much shed the fear of the big decisions, but I still see those little fears slowing me down in the day to day activities.

So today, for starters, the back cover of the book will be drafted and sent to my cover designer. And if it’s not perfect, (of course it won’t be perfect!) oh well, life will go on.

What about you? What are you going to do today despite the fear?