Challenge 185: She's 8 years old

July 14, 2010

185 posts. I'm feeling pretty good about that.

I was thinking about my friend Sara today. She's the kind of girl who plans adventures, does what she wants, thinks and dreams big, and when she sets her mind to something, she ALWAYS gets it. She's the one who will win the sweepstakes or get the killer online deal. She's happy and fun to be around and she is my model for this bucket list stuff. She's wonderfully and fully living her life! Taking vacations and buying homes. Simply...she rocks.

I see her and I see no fear. Whether she has fear or not could be another story. But from over here it looks like she just goes for it...life. And it looks like she has so much fun.

So why don't we all just go for it? What holds us back?
I don't know about a collective straight jacket, but I know that what holds me back is fear. Fear I can't do it, fear I'll fail, fear I'll succeed, fear I won't be good at it, fear I'll get embarrassed. Fear all around.

This sounds silly, but today I talked to that part of me that is afraid. She's 8 years old. And we decided together that instead of her job being protecting me from embarrassment, her job was now going to be pushing me forward into the learning process of trying new things and maybe or maybe not failing, but the point being the learning.

This is key for my bucket list stuff.