On July 4 we Americans celebrate the anniversary of a revolution. Revolutions are all about fear – scary to start, scary to face, scary to finish, even if nobody gets shot by anything heard round the world.
Revolutions can affect an (or create) industry, affect (or create) a nation, or simply change a person. (I can imagine revolutions that would involve the creation of people but that is sadly beyond the scope of this blog.) Revolutions are sudden, and unpredictable.
Objection! The suddenness of revolutions is relative. Our founding fathers didn’t wake up one day deciding to divorce Britain. The reasons and the considerations for this were slow-cooking in their souls long before John Hancock and company set America free in strokes of inky bombast. What it took to declare independence was the decision that it was worth fighting for, which is sudden only as far as there is a discrete entity, the document itself, to commemorate it.
I bet there is a potential revolution in you! Maybe hinted at by an attempt or two at ineffective, putt-putting evolution? (Clever people are always putting those two words together.) Really though, is there anything that you are pondering a push toward, that might only happen with a move as huge and committed as your signature?
A lot of Fear.less contributors talk about “baby steps”, and small scratches of progress have their place, but Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world”, not “slowly work up to being the change you see in the world”. Make it happen. Do it before you psyche yourself out. Unless it is a real revolutionary war, you will probably not be killed. You don’t need to practice more writing to start your book. You don’t need anyone’s permission to start your free online magazine about fear.
In the immortal words of Björk, “declare independence. Don’t let them do that to you!”
Wonderful post! Timely. I hope you don’t mind but I posted it on my blog (with appropriate links) because it was so closely related to an Independence Day post I had done, also on fearlessness. Check it out:
http://goodpeoplebranding.com/_blog/Good_News/post/Fearlessness_the_Fourth_of_July/
And keep up the great work. Many thanks for all the inspiration.