Thoughts from a sleepless night

It's a bad sign when you're up all night and it's not because of a crying baby. I was so frustrated last night as I lie in bed, realizing that the babe was sleeping like a log yet there I was wide awake.

I've had lots of thoughts spinning through my head lately. I wish I would take the time to blog about them more often, however I usually convince myself that no one wants to read about my craziness. But then I remember that I blog for me, not for anyone else. I have so many expectations and pressures that I put on myself and I really don't need to add blogging to the list.

So last night as I lay in bed I was recounting a frustrating, embarrassing, even somewhat demoralizing occurrence I'd had a few hours prior. I won't get into the details because it would take me all day to explain, but lets just say that despite my well meaning intentions and best efforts I messed something up. Something I really wanted to work out.

To me this confirmed one of my greatest fears...that no matter how hard I try I'll always come up short. And it made me start thinking about fear in general. There are so many things in life I've avoided because of the underlying fear. What if I fail? What it people reject me? What if I do my very best and it's still not good enough?

I've been so hard on myself for so many years that I think many of my problems come down to one central issue:

I’m afraid of loving liking myself.

It reminds me of the famous quote that's often attributed to Nelson Mandela (thought it was actually the American author Marianne Williamson who said it). If you don't know which one I'm talking about you can read it here.

I'm not really sure how we get to the point where we totally believe in ourselves and have no fears. Actually, I don't think anyone ever gets to that point because I think some level of fear and insecurity protect us from doing some really stupid stuff. Yet sometimes our justified fears get blown out of proportion and prevent us from doing things we shouldn't be afraid of.

For instance, it's a good thing most people have a fear of jumping off cliffs (or else we'd all be dead). But if you're in a plane that's about to crash and you have a parachute on your back, it's probably a pretty good time to get over that fear and just jump. I read this post by a friend the other day and it really made me think about how terrifying it can be to jump even when we know we have that harness or parachute promising our safety.

Last night the question that was running through my mind was this:

What would I do if I wasn't afraid?

It's a terrifying question to ask myself, it scares me that I don't know all the answers. But this I do know...I'm asking the question. I'm done shrinking and selling myself short. I'm starting to learn what I want. And tell those fears to watch out because I've got years of vengeance up my sleeve!