What are you so afraid of?

There’s a whole world out there waiting for you. There’s so much more that life has to offer than what’s confined in those county lines.

Allow me to take you on my journey…

I play softball. When I was a sophomore in high school I was asked to join a team that allowed me to play for free. We would play a regional tournament and if we won, MLB would fly us out to a different state, put us in a hotel, and all we had to do was show up and play ball. Sweet, right?

At this age, I was very uncomfortable being away from home. I almost turned down this extraordinary opportunity because I didn’t want to be away from my family and my home for a week. I didn’t want to go to an unfamiliar place with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but somehow my dad convinced me to join the team. I was scared, no doubt, but after 4 years of participation, I can say that joining that softball team had been the turning point of my life. That was my first leap of faith.

Not only did this team make me a better player, but it made me a more confident individual. I had met so many wonderful people that would become my friends and mentors for life. It was also the first time I was on my own without my parents. Taking advantage of this opportunity helped me gain the skills to receive an athletic scholarship and provided the foundation for me newly established confidence.

With these new skills and sense of confidence, I left PA and traveled down to North Carolina to attend college. Going away for a week with my team was one challenge, but going seven hours away from home for an entire year was a whole new ball game (pun intended). I’m going to be honest, I may have been over-confident. I hated my first month of college and had every intention of transferring. I didn’t think I could handle being away, but sticking it out was the best decision I could have made. Taking this second leap of faith gave meeven moreconfidence in myself. Getting through that first month of college helped me realize I could do anything.

Now, 2 years later, I am less than a month away from spending a semester in Australia. I went from home-body to the-stranger-who-comes-home-maybe-once-a-month-to-sleep-and-eat-all-the-food-in-the-house.

It was all because of those leaps of faith. It may not seem like a big deal, but for a shy, introvert like me, it was life changing.

I watched a video recently, and I want to share a part of it that really resonated with me. It goes:

“I was talking to a pilot and he told me that many of his passengers think that planes are dangerous to fly in. But he said, ‘Actually it is a lot more dangerous for a plane to stay on the ground.’

I said, ‘What? Like how does that sound?’

He said… he said, ‘Because, on the ground, the plane starts to rust, malfunction, and wear much faster than it ever would in the air.’

As I walked away I thought, ‘Yeah! Makes total sense… because planes were meant to live in the skies. And every person was built to live out their dream they have inside. So it is perhaps the saddest loss to live a life on the ground without ever taking off.’”
-Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Lives, Vimeo

So again I ask, what are you so afraid of? Are you afraid to fail? We tend to learn more from our failures than from our success.

Is it bad timing? Are you just not ready yet? The “right time” will never come and you will never be fully prepared. There is no such thing as the perfect moment, so take that leap of faith.

Why are we so afraid to take risks?? At the end of the day, will you be satisfied with the chances you did take, or the chances you were too afraid to take?

How can we ever live in the skies if we never take off? How can we ever reach our full potential if we don’t seize every opportunity that is presented to us? How can we experience and learn if we’re too afraid to leave where we are comfortable?

I sit in my room writing this late at night not to gloat, but to share my experience in hopes to make a difference in just one person’s life. I encourage you to take chances, no matter how scary and uncomfortable they may seem. I encourage you to go out on a limb and do something you may not normally do. Don’t stay stagnant… don’t rust up and malfunction like the plane that won’t lift off.

Get out of your comfort zone. Take advantage of every opportunity presented to you. Taking chances is what define us and shape us into who we are. Get lost finding yourself. The world is waiting for you to fulfill your purpose, so go now. Life goes by fast and time isn’t stopping for anyone.