Lean into the UNCOMFORTABLE

You never know when you're going to meet someone who will play a role in your life. Great or small changes, we experience them regardless of either our knowledge or desire. The key is to always welcome these people and their lessons. These can be brief encounters (a conversation in a coffee shop), time-bound (an exchange student), or long term relationship/friendship. You can't determine its outcome when it starts though, just as you can't know when or how it will end. But you can determine it’s quality, and that will directly influence where it takes you. The lessons we learn from every relationship (I use the term broadly here, so don’t automatically assume I’m referring to a romantic relationship!) are constantly transforming us. Shaping us, molding us, expanding us. So what if we close ourselves off? Because of fear? Shame? Anxiety? Doubt? Do we remain the same? Static, caught in a void of motionless existence? With nobody to give you an objective opinion, and outsiders perspective, the lens of objectivity can be lost. It’s so easy to avoid anxiety, to avoid pain, to avoid un-ease when we close our-self off from the outside world. It’s so simple to remain the same. So simple to when we avoid conflict. Without challenge, why change? That’s actually the simplest concept in athletic training. The reason athletes have to push so hard during training is to elicit a change, or adaptation, in the body. Athletes don’t simply happen because they want to be an athlete. It’s about the constant struggle to push your body BEYOND what it’s comfortable doing, and teaching your body to develop further to accommodate that increased load. This is the same concept in our relationships to each-other. You must be able to push past what is comfortable, to allow change to set in. Remember how easy it was to talk to new people in Kindergarten, there was hardly any trepidation to say ‘hi’ to your new classmates. Maybe you weren’t the first to approach someone, but I bet you were far more receptive to people than you are now! How many of your neighbors do you know now? How many encounters do you have with your community? How many friends do you see on a regular basis, whom you can speak to deeply and authentically? How many people in your life, know your deepest fears or your greatest loves and dreams? How many of us know our own deepest fears. How many of us can articulate our greatest dreams. How afraid are we to share these ideas, because of fear of rejection? I am one who has trouble with these. I speak openly to a select few about these things. But why can’t I be authentic in all of my conversations. It’s simple, fear of lacking social acceptance. Ostracization. Abandonment. It is my goal henceforth, to lean into uncomfortable. That’s part of what the Vlog project I’ve taken on is. It provides me with an avenue that actually scares me. Every time I hit the ‘Post’ button on YouTube, I feel stabs of panic strike through me. “Who will see this? Will they like it? Will they hate it? Should I tell them something good about me? Maybe then they will like me more!” This is part of my growth. This is part of my transformation. “To be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” Maharishi Mahesh (and Eric Thomas) Sacrifice the comforts of where you are, what you are, WHO you are, and welcome the new you.  Allow yourself the experience. Say ‘Hi’ to the person behind you in line. Ask the parent ahead of you what their baby’s name is. Tell your best friend you love them. And tell your love what your deepest fear is. Do all this, without expectation of anything but a feeling of relief. Relief that you no longer have to harbor that lie, the lie that you WANT to express yourself, you WANT to be more than what you are now, you WANT to be your best self.