Big, Bold Moves!

Hi, all!  Here is an email I received the other day -- I thought y'all might enjoy reading what Matt from Fear.less (a fantastic ezine, has to say about Big, Bold Moves!  Enjoy!

 

.....It's easy to get impatient on your quest to be fearless. You read the books and 

the magazines, you feel pumped up and ready for action, and then you wake up 

the next morning and things are pretty much the same. When you're impatient 

and want to shake things up, you begin to think about doing something Big. Big 

things are deliberate, autonomy-assuring actions that change your daily life: 

quitting your job, moving to another country, going back to university, that sort of 

thing. Maybe you have friends who are doing something big, or you saw a movie 

or read a Fear.less story where someone did something you think is big and it 

worked out for them.

Humans like big, bold moves because they are flashy and they can be indefinitely 

postponed. Sometimes they are even useful. But flash can be illusive. Everyone 

knows an attractive person who is unkind to others, or a person who flaunts their 

material wealth but is actually in debt from poor money management. This is a 

similar thing. It's an alluring but incomplete narrative.

Our contributors always talk about baby steps, little things, small victories. These 

phrases are not as sexy as the idea of a strong, independent man or woman telling 

his or her stuffy corporate boss to shove it and then starting a new life. But they 

are important. They're not called baby steps just because babies take them, but 

because babies need them to learn to walk. You have to gradually build up to a 

wholesome, satisfying level of courage and mindfulness. If you could do it 

overnight, everyone would.

I would never discourage anyone outright from making a massive life-changing 

decision. That would be tyrannical. But you have to develop a knowledge of the truth 

that rises above the romance of the situation and be able to say that yes, this gives 

me what I need for these reasons, and I will be able to handle it because I've been 

working on myself in these ways. The problems and resistance at the core of your 

being will follow you to any job and any city. No matter how much money or how 

many friends you end up making, you will have to live with yourself your whole life. 

And you know better than anyone that you can be pretty brutal to yourself.

Sometimes big brash impulsive decisions are survivable. Then again, you probably 

know someone who totally has an uncle that, like, didn't wear his seatbelt and got 

into a real bad car accident, and walked away. 

"Following your dreams" and "doing what you need to do" are super cool, but you 

also need to respect yourself enough to 1) scrutinize the narratives you're fed, no 

matter the source and 2) make an honest attempt to know, accept and live with 

yourself. You deserve no less than the best, right? Life is tricky because being both 

short and fragile, you have to push it to the limit while also handling with care. 

It is possible, though. Our contributors all manage it; it's so counter-intuitive, it's kind 

of poetic. Are you up for the challenge of blending drastic with diligent, style with 

substance, symphony with silence?

Matt