A few weeks ago, buoyed by the caffeinated hope of posting more frequently and yet taxing your precious time even less, I vowed to try to keep my future posts as concise as possible. Overall, I think we can all agree that I've failed miserably. My posts remain not only long, but digressive and infrequent. Thank you for enabling me with your encouragement.
But today, I'm actually coming through with a short post that honors the spirit of that promise. To achieve my desired end, I've gone ahead and resorted to a bit of shameless plagiarism.
If you're not currently following the brilliant author and thinker Seth Godin, I would highly recommend that you do. His posts are gorgeously concise - hip-pocket haikus of insight and wisdom.
His most recent post nailed me right between the eyes. I'm going to cut and paste it in its entirety below, with just one sentence of prologue from me:
Who would you be if you weren't afraid?
[and now, here's Seth:]
We're pretty good at finding demons to be afraid of.
The other.
The one in the shadows.
Change.
The family member we can't possibly please.
Competition.
Critics.
The invisible network of foes conspiring against us and what we stand for.
It turns out, though, that the one who usually lets us down is us.
Our unwillingness to leap, to commit, to trust our own abilities.
It's the internal narrative that seeks disaster just as much as it craves reassurance.
That's the one we ought to be vilifying, fortifying ourselves against and frightened of.
It gets less powerful once we are brave enough to look it in the eye.
[Here's a link to Seth's blog - you won't regret subscribing. It's like popping a daily emotional multivitamin.]
[And if you'd like future blog posts from me emailed to you directly, posts which may or may not honor my promise of brevity, go ahead and subscribe in the form below.]