Greeting from New Zealand!
I’ve been here for a little over a month now with 11 more days to go and then it’s off to Fiji.
During my time in New Zealand, I’ve come face to face with a major fear of mine.
And get this.. it was by choice!
You’re probably wondering what the fear is and why I would do such a thing to myself.
Two great questions that I’ll answer for you here.
My biggest fear is fear of the unknown.
And because it is unknown, of course it makes for me to make up what that unknown looks like.
Let me elaborate on this a bit more and perhaps even embarrass myself a bit.
My run in with “fear of the unknown” came from me taking a helicopter ride up to a glacier where I was dropped off to hike up the glacier for 3 hours.
By the way, I’d never been in a helicopter or on a glacier let alone hiked up one.
I was definitely excited about these new experiences.
But more than anything, I was super scared and nervous about them too.
Why?
Because of the unknown.
The unknown of flying in a helicopter.
The unknown of being dropped off on a glacier.
The unknown of hiking up a glacier.
And because these were all unknown to me, I started asking the most logical of questions:
What if the helicopter crashes?
Who will tell my family?
Who will get my stuff from the hotel room?
What if I get anxious during the flight up to the glacier?
What if there’s an avalanche while we’re hiking up there glacier?
(FYI – before we started the hike we actually did see a small avalanche happen high above).
What if bad weather rolls in and we’re stuck in the glacier with no way out?
You ever do that?
When faced with the unknown, you begin asking and focusing on questions such as mine here?
Because you know, focusing on such questions is very beneficial (said no one ever).
Best part?
Everything I worried about, focused on, and questioned, never happened.
What did happen is I had one of the best experiences of my life.
Which never would have happened if I didn’t look past my fear of the unknown.
How about you … do you have any unknowns you’re fearful of?
Crazy thoughts and questions you focus on as I did?
Thoughts and questions that have you feeling scared, nervous, anxious?
Worse yet, keeping you from taking action on what you want, what excites you?
Starting a new weight loss routine.
Training for a marathon.
Starting a new career or business.
Traveling the world.
Writing a book?
I can tell you first hand after my heli hike glacier experience…
What we think about, worry about, and question, 99.9% of the time, never happens.
So what does happen 99.9% of the time?
Well, based on my experience I’ll tell you…
An awesome feeling of excitement.
A soaring level of confidence.
A deep internal happiness.
A sense of adventure and living life.
A feeling of being alive.
Going forward, I encourage you and I to focus on these feeling instead whenever we find ourselves fearing the unknown.
Because 99.9% of the time, these are the feeling that await us.
When we feel the fear of the unknown and act anyways.
It’s not about being fearless either – there’s no such thing.
It’s about feeling the fear, welcoming the unknown, and taking action.
In the words of the great Marcus Aurelius…
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Let’s not let fear of the unknown stop us from living.
You’re awesome!
Mike
