Is fear holding you back? Learn how to move forward in spite of your fear. Don’t miss out on great opportunities. Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels
We all feel fear for various reasons throughout our lives. It’s an instinctual response to protect us from harm. The challenge is to know when the fear we feel is based on a real threat and when it isn’t. Often when trying something new, we might have to take risks. This can result in feelings of fear. Fear is healthy when it protects us from real danger; however, it’s unhealthy when it holds us back from moving forward in a positive direction or drives us into fear-based decision making as a normal course of action.
Is Fear Holding You Back?
Throughout my entire life, I have struggled with my self-confidence. There are many opportunities I never took because I was more afraid of what could go wrong than I was motivated by what could go right. I was so afraid of failing or simply being embarrassed that I failed to act and missed out on good opportunities. Living in fear isn’t living life to its fullest. Don’t let fear rule your life.
I was a rather shy kid growing up – I’m still shy, though it doesn’t always show. One year in high school, I auditioned for a part in the school play: Arsenic and Old Lace. I actually got a small part (Mr. Witherspoon) in the play and spent the next several weeks rehearsing and learning my lines. When the time came for the show, I went out on stage and played my part the best I could. I was nervous when I auditioned and terrified to perform on stage in front of a large audience! I put myself in this position deliberately, even though it terrified me (what if I forget my lines?!) specifically for the purpose of pushing myself well outside of my comfort zone. I did it because it scared me. And it was absolutely worth it. I had a great time, met new people, and felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
In recent months, at nearly half century of age, I decided to go from a ‘couch potato’ with a desk job who never exercises to a trials biking athlete. Trials biking is not for the faint of heart – it involves hopping onto and off off obstacles and doing things I never even knew was possible using a bicycle. For essentially every new move or trick, I need to learn a new technique and skill. Sometimes when I get ready to try one of these new moves, I find myself gripped with fear. I’m not even tackling any high obstacles yet – often just wooden pallets a few inches off the ground – but the fear of falling, crashing, or otherwise getting hurt seeps into my brain. Interestingly, I have noticed other trials biking athletes at the professional level saying the same thing when trying some new stunt – albeit much more difficult and dangerous than anything I’m able to do.
I’ve realized that it’s just a mind game. You need to act in spite of the fear. You will feel fear, and that’s OK. Acknowledge it, but don’t let it have power over you. As long as what you’re about to do is legal, moral, and not likely to cause death or serious injury, set the fear aside in your brain and concentrate on what you need to do. Sometimes you’ll nail it, other times you’ll crash and burn. That’s OK! Get back up, brush yourself off, and try again. Learn from what doesn’t work. Experiment. Practice. Take smaller, more easily achievable steps when necessary. Be patient and persevere. While things can (and will) go wrong, the worst that you imagine almost never happens. You’ll find that most of the time, things turn out better than you expected. As you get used to acting in spite of fear, you will not only gain confidence, but also experience a richer life by achieving those things the fearful never attempt.
[Note: I originally wrote this as a life lesson for my son on February 10, 2018.]
A decade and a half ago, we had piles of debt (2 mortgages, 2 car loans, credit cards…), a single income, not much being set aside for retirement, and a child on the way. A large percentage of our monthly pay went towards debt, we never seemed to have any extra money, and everything about finances was stressful. Something needed to change, but we had no idea what or how.
When you’re in debt and don’t have control of your finances, life (and marriage) is much more stressful. Photo credit: Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
Getting Started: A Glimmer of Hope
One day, the hosts of a podcast I listened to started talking about this guy named Dave Ramsey who had this program for getting out of debt – a radio talk show as well as some books. The podcasting couple – a husband and wife – had just started the program themselves. I figured, what the heck, can’t hurt, so I borrowed a copy of The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey from the local library. Within short order, I’d read the book from cover to cover and had taken a bunch of notes.
After reading The Total Money Makeover, I discussed the concepts in the book with my wife. We agreed to give it a shot.
Fundamentals: Follow a Budget and Eliminate Debt (Forever!)
The plan Dave Ramsey teaches is pretty straightforward and it works. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Dave developed his plan based on what he calls the “baby steps”, which he originally formulated from his personal experiences recovering from bankruptcy and becoming debt free, refined while teaching others how to do the same. Eliminating debt frees up your income which you can then give to charitable causes and invest for both retirement as well as future major expenses. One of the keys to doing this requires intentionally controlling your money, which is the purpose of a budget.
A Personal Budget: The Roadmap For Living Within Your Means
We started our journey by developing and living to a budget. I’ll probably discuss the details of budgeting in a future post. It seems counterintuitive, but having a budget was not constrictive, it was actually freeing! It also helped reduce stress. We looked at every dollar coming in, and used the budget to plan every dollar going out – including meeting the essentials (food, shelter, electricity, clothing) and paying off debt. Following a budget (i.e., a plan) also kept us from overspending and reduced impulse spending.
Paying Off Our Debt
Fortunately, our student loans had already been paid off when we started this journey, but we still had plenty of other debt. Now that we had made the decision to eliminate debt and live within our means, we could avoid additional debt while paying down the debt we had.
I had purchased a small condominium unit within a few years of graduating college. I moved away for a few years, but decided to rent out the condominium instead of selling it – probably not the best choice. It was a challenge keeping it rented, and even when it was rented, it was not always easy getting tenants to pay. Soon after starting the plan, we were able to pay of the remainder of the mortgage on the condominium by accelerating our payments – by this time, it was actually one of the smaller debts. Shortly after paying off the condominium, we were able to sell it.
Since the mortgage on the condominium was paid off when we sold it, the entire proceeds from the sale (minus realtor fees and taxes) were ours! We used this to our advantage by paying off the loans on our two cars and rolling the remainder into the mortgage of our primary residence, which we simultaneously refinanced at a lower interest rate (also eliminating PMI).
At this point, the only remaining debt was the mortgage on our primary residence. We had an emergency fund of about 6 months of expenses. It was time to start cranking up the retirement savings and saving for our son’s college education. And throughout this entire process, we were giving generously to our church and charitable causes.
When You Eliminate Debt, You Have Money (and Peace of Mind)
Following our new financial lifestyle means that we no longer borrow money and an comfortable emergency fund. That means when we want something that costs more than is available in the month’s budget, we have to be patient and save up for it. While this isn’t always easy, it does mean that we always have enough money for whatever we need, we have a much larger monthly cashflow due to having no debt payments, and there is almost no financially induced stress. It also means that when the unexpected occurs, we are able to adapt.
Sometimes the unexpected “emergency” is mildly annoying; other times, it can be financially catastrophic if you’re unprepared. Within a few years of overhauling our finances and financial practices, we hit a huge bump in the road, so to speak. I lost my job during the economic meltdown in 2008-09. However, because we chose to eliminate debt, live debt free, stick to a budget, and build an emergency fund, we were able to ride through almost a year of unemployment. It was stressful enough having no source of income; I cannot even imagine how stressful this period would have been if we still had piles of debt too.
After getting another job and getting back on our feet, we continued our plan. When it came time for replacing an aging vehicle, we saved up and bought a beautiful, low mileage, 2 year old car and paid cash (I literally just wrote a check on the spot). We took a couple expensive vacations (Disneyworld was one of them) by saving up and just paying for them without using credit. We save up a little every month into a Christmas fund for buying gifts each year; we budget the year’s gifts in advance and pay for everything without borrowing on a credit card. My trials bikes weren’t cheap, but I saved up and bought them without any debt. Of course we had some emergencies as well, some costing several thousand dollars each, but since we have chosen to eliminate debt, we just paid for them (though I grumbled about it a bit) – without borrowing money or stressing out.
The next big step to eliminate debt was to pay off our home mortgage. After paying off all of our other debt, we cranked up our retirement savings to 15%, began saving monthly for our son’s college education, and then accelerated our monthly mortgage principal payments for our home. When we approached the home stretch on the mortgage, we realized that we had some stock investments that were separate from our retirement funds – if we had remembered this earlier, we would have included this in our “baby steps” plan to eliminate debt. Regardless, it was there, so we used it to write a check for the remaining balance of our mortgage. In approximately a decade, we had gone from overloaded with debt, to completely debt free. And if you think freeing up money that went to consumer debt and car loans freed up your monthly cashflow, wait until you see what happens when you also have no more mortgage payments!
So, what’s the plan now with “all that money”? Well, it does not mean go go crazy, act irresponsible, and blow it all. Every month, that’s for sure. But it does mean that monthly expenses are more flexible, there is more “extra” money for going out and having fun, and we can save much more quickly to pay for the really expensive things like cars, my son’s college education (with zero student loans), remodeling and/or buying a new house, retirement, vacations, etc., without having to borrow money ever again.
You Can Do It Too!
I am not telling you all of this to brag about what we did, but rather to show you what is possible for you. You can do it, but you need to make a choice – eliminate debt (forever), purposefully control your money with a budget and a plan to love within your means, give generously, and invest in your future.
Final Thoughts
One of the primary motivations for publishing this blog is to take what I have learned in over a half century of living and provide it to you, so you can benefit from it. Personal finance is one area that I struggled with for a while, but now have some good habits and valuable wisdom that I can share. Now that I’ve shared some of my story here for context, going forward, I intend to include posts regarding specific details for winning at personal finances. Stay tuned!
Looking back throughout my life when I’ve tried to learn new skills, I’ve realized that I hadn’t been practicing in the most effective way, so my success was limited and progress slower than I’d expected. It was only recently in starting to learn to play guitar from Justin Guitar (www.justinguitar.com) that I started to appreciate more effective ways to practice. In fact, Justin has a whole area of his website devoted to practicing, though he also mentions some of these throughout his tutorials. A few key lessons from Justin stand out for me:
Set goals regarding what you want to achieve and why – this helps motivate you, especially when practice gets boring or you are trying to figure out how to do something really difficult.
“Practice makes permanent.” Note he says “PERMANENT”, not “perfect”! It means that whatever you practice will be ingrained and retained…all the more reason to practice doing the skill the right way!
Following closely on #2, start slowly and pick of speed as you improve. Remember that you want to learn how to do it right, so you need to move at a pace that allows you to do the skill correctly, not quickly, to start with.
Practice the fundamentals. Keep practicing them. Fundamentals are the foundation for more advanced skills.
“Don’t practice what you know, practice what you don’t know.” The stuff you haven’t yet mastered is the stuff you need to practice. Focusing on the stuff you don’t know can be frustrating simply because you don’t know it, but the only way to ever become good at it is to practice it. The natural inclination is to switch to what you can do since it’s easier and more fun, but that won’t help you progress.
‘Playing’ is not ‘practicing’. Practice is very focused on learning how to do something very specific (like playing a specific chord, changing between two chords, etc.) and do it properly. Playing is for enjoyment using what you have learned.
I used to mistake ‘playing’ for ‘practicing’, so it was much more difficult to learn a skill. Now I try to break things into smaller parts to focus on, then practice those specific things over and over – and try to get feedback to make sure I’m doing it correctly (preferably from an expert). That allows me to show a marked improvement on those fundamental skills, and lets me fit the separate fundamentals together more easily.
In addition to continually hammering on the fundamentals, it’s also important to take time to ‘play’. While effective practice is critical to learning something properly, you also need to play around and have fun with what you have learned so far. You need a balance between practice and play in order to maintain interest while also improving your abilities.
Another aspect critical to learning a skill is to be willing to have failures and setbacks along the way. Part of learning involves taking small risks, experimenting, and stretching yourself outside your comfort zone. A book I read recently(Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future, by Leonard A. Schlesinger, et. al., Harvard Business Review Press, 2012) with respect to entrepreneurship discusses this at length – how to fail quickly, cheaply, and often. Why? Because you can also learn a lot from your ‘failures’. It is important to note here that ‘failure’ in this sense means that the result of an effort or experiment did not have the intended results. We leverage these failures by analyzing them, learning the proper lessons from them, and applying the resulting experience towards the next ‘experiment’. Using failures to build wisdom that guides us forward closer to our desired futures is a positive, healthy, productive attitude. Conversely, wallowing in despair over each failure is debilitating and destructive. Likewise, failing on purpose by not giving your best effort and then using that as an excuse to quit is unhealthy as well.
As I mentioned above, it was only recently that I’ve truly begun to appreciate how to practice properly and balance practice with play. While I am no means an expert (yet), I have used these techniques to improve my skills in photography, playing guitar, and learning trials biking. In each of these areas, I have watched myself progress – with the biggest leaps in progress following focused repetition of one or more fundamentals. Often you have only seen the end result where I seem to pick up some skill out of nowhere, What you typically have not seen is all the underlying practice. Maybe the once exception has been trials biking. How many times have you seen me attempting the same thing over, and over, and over, and over. How many times have you seen me fall off my bike – whether it be a simple ‘dab’, a controlled bail-out, a back-flop, or a launch over my handlebars? So when you see me actually successfully pull off a trick, you know it was not my first attempt – by that point I’ve tried it a zillion times, and probably crashed and burned the first half-zillion. You know, because you’ve seen a lot of the unsuccessful attempts and the hours upon hours of practice I put in. I didn’t just hop on a bike and nail a perfect endo first try – I face-planted quite a few times first (hint: that’s why I practice on the grass…it’s softer than pavement).
Hopefully you can benefit from this insight and get much more out of your practicing (of whatever skills you wish to learn). I sure wish I knew how to practice properly when I was a kid.
[Note: I originally wrote this as a life lesson for my son on September 25, 2017.]
Believe it or not, failure is an essential aspect of learning – whether you’re learning to ride a bike, developing a new technology, building a business, or simply learning a new subject in school. The goal is not to fail intentionally or to fail because you didn’t do your best, but rather to understand that when you try something new, failures are likely to occur. Every failure contains a lesson – this is what makes failures so valuable. The key is to learn the correct lessons from each failure and to adapt accordingly.
Unfortunately, fear of failure stops many people from even trying. The pain, frustration, cost, and embarrassment of their own past failures or mistakes teaches them that failure hurts – so they avoid failure (I struggle with this myself). The irony is that while failure can sometimes be difficult, being willing to fail and learn from it is what it takes to achieve great things. However, embracing failure does not mean taking dangerous risks and making huge “blind leaps”.
The secret is to learn how to take calculated risks toward your objectives. It’s important to guide your choices with some level of information and analysis. The trick is to know when to act since you’ll never have perfect and complete information. Then act (practice, experiment) in some small way and learn from what worked and what did not work. By constantly taking steps and keeping the risks relatively small, you’ll always be learning, growing, improving, winning. It’s certainly not easy, but it works.
James Dyson is a well known inventor and entrepreneur who embraces failure and emphasizes it’s important role in success. I recommend reading this article and listening to this interview with Mr. Dyson.
[Note: I originally wrote this as a life lesson for my son on April 15, 2016.]
You can become good (or great) at almost anything you desire. All it takes is practice. The better you want to be, the more practice it will take. Experts make difficult things seem easy but they had to practice a lot to become that proficient. If having a given skill is worth it to you, then learn the correct approach and practice, practice, practice! Then you will become the expert.
[Note: I originally wrote this as a life lesson for my son on August 22, 2016.]
Why do all the other managers seem to know what to do and how to do it all the time, when I don’t? That was the question I asked myself repeatedly when I accepted my first management position in late 2015.
Honestly, I struggled with the decision to even apply for the position (not only was it my first management job, the project we were tackling was in rough shape). After I got the job, I wondered why everyone but me always had all the answers. I felt overwhelmed and inadequate, lacking in confidence.
After probably several months, I came to a critical realization. All those other managers, at all levels of the organization – they don’t always have all the answers! Often they just had more experience in handling the ambiguous situations, decision making, and leadership than I did. And sometimes I think they were just winging it.
This realization has made the job much easier for me, on two levels. First, I stopped being so hard on myself, like there was something wrong with me – it reduced my personal stress level. Second, it gave me a better perspective on the behaviors and decisions that other managers were making. Some are certainly better at management and leadership than others, for sure, but now I could see other managers as ordinary people, just like me. I became less intimidated by management.
If, like I did, you struggle with confidence as a new manager, consider that you’re not alone. You’re not the only one who feels that way. And managers are not all-knowing. There is a good chance that they may be struggling also – their job might be much harder for them than it appears. Learn from them and how they solve problems, make decisions, and lead, but remember they are just like you.
There is a place I’ve been thinking might be a good location for trials biking, but I still haven’t tried it out yet. I finally scoped it out today to see it it was worth trying to ride. Not only does it looks like a decent place for bike trials, but it is absolutely beautiful, especially with the fall colors.
Today, I merged two of my hobbies: trials biking and photography. While investigating the location for suitability of trails bike riding, I also took some time to enjoy the scenery and snap some photos.
In addition to the visual beauty, this location also provided the soothing sounds of flowing water. As I got closer to the little falls, the sounds of nearby traffic were all but drowned out.
While I’ve lived in the area for nearly 2 decades, this is the first time I’ve actually stopped to check this place out. It didn’t disappoint. If I didn’t have places to be, I would have stayed longer. It was so peaceful and soothing. And the lighting was perfect.
When I got up for work the other morning, there was an incredibly loud cricket that was chirping somewhere in the kitchen. When I turned on the lights, he stopped briefly and then started chirping again. I figured I’d search around for him so I could move him out of the kitchen (and out of the house). He stopped his “singing” as soon as I started walking across the kitchen floor, but as I got closer to the sink, he chirped again, so I could tell he was somewhere to the left of the sink, hidden somewhere in all the stuff on the counter. I figured it was going to be an extensive hunt. I lifted a crumpled paper towel first, since that was the easiest place to look. To my surprise, there was a tiny little cricket there – no longer than my pinkie nail. I have no idea how that little fella could chirp so loudly! As soon as I turned over the paper towel, that cheerful little guy crawled right onto my hand as if to say, “Good morning! You’re here! I was waiting for you!” I carefully transported the little fella out the kitchen door and released him onto the deck… though I did it by kinda shaking my hand, giving him what was probably an unexpected and crazy ride down. I felt a little bad after that since he was acting just so proud of his “singing” and seemed so happy to see me.
Obviously insects don’t have emotions like we do, nor do they have any sort of bond to humans. Regardless of these facts, that little cricket’s behavior gave the appearance of demonstrating these qualities, so in my mind, I “anthropomorphized” him in my imagination. Picturing that little critter in this way changed my attitude from being annoyed at having to search for a loud bug to being joyful instead. In a way, this event anchored my day, giving me something fun to think about throughout the day.
I find it interesting that such a silly little thing could have such a positive impact. I am glad that I was able to find joy in that moment.
With all that has been going on in my life over the past several years, my focus on space exploration and space settlement has waned significantly. This has been primarily due to two factors that began several years ago: (1) my promotion to management, and (2) my obsession with trials biking.
Recent Inspiration
On a whim, I recently took the day off from work to attend the virtual “A Day in Space 2020” hosted by the National Space Society (NSS). While I didn’t really learn much during this event since most of the content was fairly high level (I was already aware of most of what was presented), it was still inspiring. Around the same period of time, I got a copy of Space is Open For Business, by Robert Jacobson, via the author’s recent interview on The Space Show. I’m about halfway through the book now. The third coincidental factor was that Michael Laine started posting regular videos again on the Liftport YouTube channel. I had connected with Michael online over a decade ago, just a few months before Liftport went into hibernation.
So, now I feel more energized and inspired to get back into space exploration and settlement. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. While I hadn’t participated too much in the “space field”, I had avidly read space related books for decades and had been reading news updates online daily for years. I even went to a few events such as the NSS International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Tucson, AZ back in 2000 and a Space Day at the New England Air Museum about a decade ago. I’d even done some volunteer work editing some YouTube videos for Liftport, also over a decade ago.
Mining Materials for Space Settlement
Mining asteroids and other heavenly bodies for materials to use for supporting space settlement has been on my mind for probably close to three decades now. I think that might be my starting point. We’ll see where it leads. Maybe I’ll just research and read up on it. Maybe I’ll get more ambitious and see if there is some way I can do something to advance the technology or the cause in some way.
The intersection of three different conditions has led to an apparently endless stream of injuries.
At the time I wrote this post, I am 50 years old.
I started trials biking (at 47).
Prior to starting to learn trials biking, I hadn’t exercised regularly in probably a decade. And I still don’t exercise much, other than trials biking.
Ever since I fell in love with biking 3 years ago, I have suffered injury after injury. I’m not talking about getting minor cuts, scrapes and bruises (although there are plenty of those), requiring stitches, or breaking bones – the stuff you might expect with trials biking. No, I’m primarily referring to stupid, nagging, annoying injuries that are largely due to my age and lack of exercise.
I kicked off the injuries by jamming the big toe on my right foot and aggravating a bunion. Next, I hurt my shoulder, probably from going over the bars several times doing endos. Those eventually healed after a few weeks. I think there might have been some others in there as well. But last summer is when the persistent and recurring injuries started. Somehow I did something to aggravate my arm, probably around July 2019 – the result is tendinitis in my right arm. I also began to suffer from an impinged sciatic nerve and a string of recurring lower back injuries.
2017 X-Ray of my right foot taken after jamming my big toe – nothing was broken, but you can see the angles of the joints in my big toe bones as well as the bunion
I had physical therapy for my arm (tendinitis) and back for about 4-5 months. Everything seemed to be better in my arm by March 2020. I even bought a new trials bike in January, which I rode a few times in the driveway and parking lots, taking it real easy. But after a couple rides in the woods, my arm is now in pain again, almost constantly. It hurts to lift anything – even just a cup of coffee (though ironically, it does not hurt while riding – only after). It feels like the past several months of physical therapy, stretches, and staying off my bike were completely wasted. This is so incredibly frustrating!
My sciatic nerve issue seems to have been resolved and my lower back has been pretty good for the past 1-2 months. I spend 20-30 minutes every morning before work doing stretches and pushups – I started that routine while undergoing physical therapy. While this seems to have “fixed” my back, I still need to be careful – when it goes out, it’s usually for something dumb and comes without warning.
Recently I added another nagging injury. This time I wrenched the big toe on my left foot, irritating that bunion. Before that could heal, I jammed it again, even harder than the first time. The re-injury also seems to have pulled some tendons or something in the bottom of my foot. While the worst pain subsided after a couple days, my toe joint is still sore weeks later and is aggravated by walking. Additionally, now I get random cramps in the bottom of my foot, usually right after I stand up. This is not extremely painful (it does hurt), but it’s quite annoying.
Why am I blathering on about my injuries? Whining, hoping for sympathy? Nope. Is it frustrating? You bet it is. Does it hurt? Sure. But none of that is really the point. Look at the 3 conditions I cited at the beginning of this post as contributing to my injuries. Don’t do what I did. Start exercising when you’re young, and keep exercising. Stay active. Find something physical that you love to do, and do it regularly. If you decide to start something later in life that can be rough on your body, ease into it. Get yourself into shape, work on building muscle, and do stretches. Don’t go from zero to full throttle at 50. Obviously I can’t guarantee you won’t still get injured, but if I could go back and do it again, this is the way I’d do it.
There is another point to make as well. You might ask, “if you keep getting injured, why do you keep doing it?” Why? Because in trials biking I have discovered something I absolutely love to do. When I’m not riding my bike, I’m often thinking about riding. When I am riding, I don’t want to stop, even if I’ve ridden to the brink of exhaustion. Trials riding is one of the most fun and rewarding things I’ve ever done. I enjoy it too much to give it up, despite the injuries and ongoing pain. So for now at least, I will continue to ride and hopefully still see ongoing skill progression. And maybe I can figure out how to “fix” the chronic issues like the tendinities in my arm.
