What If You Actually Answered the Call?
Welcome to My Musings. Where I share insights that have impacted me, thoughts on personal growth, and actionable strategies to help you navigate career and life.
“What is getting in the way of you making the change?”
This is one of my favourite questions to ask people. Particularly because they almost always know the answer: fear.
Fear of failure. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of disappointment. Fear of loss.
Lots and lots of fear.
And, that fear serves as resistance - a barrier to actually getting through to making the change we want to make.
But, for people who want to strike their own path, go out on their own, or just defy what was always expected (or demanded) of them, there is one fear that, I think, presents itself above all:
The Fear of Success.
To quote the great Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, we fear:
“that we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. […] We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land.”
It’s funny - we can be so afraid of the thing that we want the most.
So, what do we do?
Well, like in other adult development crisis situations, we have options.
Some of us defer: “Oh, I’ll get to that when the kids are older/when I retire/next week.”
Some of us avoid altogether: “Oh, that’s just not me/my destiny/in the cards for me.”
And, then, some of us get really good at tolerating the anxiety that comes with change - and doing it anyway.
In Rollo May’s thinking, anxiety marks the distance between the life you live and the life you want. Avoiding it keeps you stuck; tolerating it unlocks action.
For those of us who are willing to tolerate it though, that often requires learning how to do that.
And learning how to do that comes through: Conversations. Instructions. Practices. Inspiration.
By not doing what’s needed to learn how to tolerate the anxiety of change, we stay stuck. We increase the likelihood of remaining in unhealthy discontent - comparing, fantasizing, burning out. We live in regret. We strain relationships. Like Sylvia Plath’s figs on the tree1, our potential choices rot because we never made the choice in the first place.
But - if we take the steps needed to learn, we stand to gain so much more - alignment with our authentic selves, more energy to do what we really care about, increased possibility, deeper connection, and a greater sense of agency - that we can, truly, impact and create our own paths.
It’s not easy - there is no question about that. But, by doing what is needed to find out how to make the change - whether that is starting a new career, entering into a new role, or founding the business you always knew you wanted to - you are that much closer to getting there.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
