Once again, I'm surprised how many others that movie effected negatively. I mean with a movie tagline like "You'll never go back in the water again," what did everyone expect? But I digress...before I even really started my post!I've been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about how this whole process of writing things down to get them out and examine them is so crucial to the whole grabbing the starfish thing. I've never been one to keep a journal for cathartic purposes, but I guess that the function of many a blog in this day and age. I started this blog a year ago with the hopes in finding my purpose in life and hopefully helping someone along the way. The biggest thing I've learned? I need to get out of my own way...well...that and that other people share alot of the same fears and roadblocks to the ocean.
I guess I also really learned how to get our of my own way which is just as important as the need to do so. Once I stripped the first two fears away, I started finding and addressing more. I have mild OCD, which I've mentioned before, and hoarder tendencies that, thankfully, are not great enough to get me on a show on A&E. I am also deathly afraid of not getting enough sleep or setting my house on fire. While these would make interesting stories, It's not that I don't want to tell them out of some sort of shame. It's just that the outcome would be the same. I now understand better where the basis for my fears come from. I've learned to deconstruct them and take small, life changing steps, to get beyond them. When I look back, I realize I've done a lot of talking about small steps. It's been the easiest way to overcome overwhelmedness, develop a road back to health, come to terms with past pain or really just put any plans I have into action.
My high school friend, Geoff, recently posted a note about fear in Facebook when talking about a situation from his life. "The human mind is an amazing and adaptive thing, and I like to think that in my life, like with skydiving I have overcome most of my fears. I still have an healthy fear of snakes, and a few other fears like that, but for the most part, I have no overwhelming phobias. ...It took me several years to overcome my fear of leaving, something I know that I had wanted and needed to do to continue my life and make myself happy, but fear kept me in that situation much longer that I needed to be in it, fear of the unknown, fear of what I would do, fear of what she would do, fear of how she would react, fear of being alone. But finally it came to the point where I had to let go of the airplane wing, and again, after a couple months of panic, I am much happier than I had been."
"Several years"...baby steps...but he did it. You just have to know it's not an overnight fix, but a lifetime lifestyle change for the better if you can just get started...
So everyone say it with me once again...
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
"Only I will remain"...I recently remembered that when I was a little girl, one of my favorite games was to splash around in a pool and pretend I was a seal. I want to remember what that time in my life felt like emotionally. I would just swim around with excitement and a love for whatever was next on life's journey. After the last year, I've gotten to the beach and so time to start wading in...I can't let fear and any lack of momentum stop me...unless...
ACK!!!!! ...remember the Jaws2 movie tagline was, "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..."
Okay...that's better....baby steps...whew...
Happy Fishing,
--Red
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