Have you heard the song?

What scares us?  I don’t mean in the monster-under-the-bed way, or in the obvious serial-killers-are-terrifying way.  I mean the everyday fears that actually hold us back from things.

Take, for example, bathing suits.  Many of us find them to be at least somewhat anxiety-provoking.  We fear the exposure.  We fear the social pressure.  We fear the mirror.  We fear some kind of referendum on our characters based on the evidence of our bodies.  We cannot let this fear keep us from splashing in the waves and playing with our kids and enjoying waterskiing, boating, tubing, sliding, surfing, or paddleboarding.  Heck, we can’t let it keep us from building sand castles.

Or maybe the issue is competition.  We hesitate to join the team because no one has ever let us out of right field before.  What if we strike out?  What if we lose?  We are grown ups:  we can go out to pizza afterwards anyway if we want.  Are we really playing for the trophy?  I doubt it.  It’s about friends and running around and dirt and sweat and, be honest, Otter Pops.  Winning is fun, sure, but so is learning to play better, to learn the strategies, to cheer and encourage even when things go wrong.

Let’s do just a little bit of what scares us—go a little farther, a little faster, a little more out there than we have before.  That’s where the growth happens, the excitement, the good story.