What Would I Do If I Wasn't Afraid?
I just finished reading Who Moved My Cheese?
It is the story of four beings (mice and/or people) in a maze. They run through the maze day in and day out until one day they find a large store of cheese. So they camp on it. For a long time. They get very comfortable with that cheese. Then one day they wake up and the cheese is gone. How they each react to the cheese being gone is the real point of the story.
It is a metaphor for change. As I was reading it I started mentally changing 'cheese' to 'buzz'. That fit my situation better. Who Moved My Buzz? I discovered this great store of feel good buzz. So I camped on it. But eventually the buzz was gone. It didn't feel good anymore. I kept doing the same thing to try to get it back, but it didn't work. I didn't want to look for a new way to feel good. I wanted the old way to come back.
One of the characters in the story does the same thing. He stays in the same place, doing the same things, hoping that one day the cheese will come back. He doesn't want to go back out into the maze and look for different cheese.
Then one day he wakes up and asks himself, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid?" And he heads back out into the maze.
It wasn't easy for him in the maze. He had to learn new things. He made mistakes. He had bad times. But he eventually found new cheese.
What would I do if I wasn't afraid?
I would stop drinking.
I would pursue new job skills.
I would quit my high-paying job and start my own company.
I would mend relationships with friends and family.
I would laugh more and make new friends.
I would find new buzz.
I did all those things. It's not because I wasn't afraid. I was terrified. But those were the things I wanted, and I wasn't going to allow being afraid stop me from getting them.
What would YOU do if you weren't afraid?