Recently a friend commented regarding a young man that had something wonderful happen in his life, “There’s no place for him to go from here but downhill”. He was referring to the fact that this kid had, from the get-go, achieved something that most people will never achieve.
My response was that he had set his baseline and there was no where to go but up from there!
I’ve thought about this comment for the last few days and I think it’s really relevant to the barrier many entrepreneurs face. It’s that overwhelming fear that when things go right that it’s all going to crumble and there’s no place to go but down.
What a horrible limitation we put on ourselves, keeping us from ever reaching our full potential!
Is it a trained response that over the years has become ingrained as a self-defense mechanism to keep us from the agony of defeat?
One of the beautiful things of having more years under your belt (being 50 counts for something!) is knowing that bad things are going to happen, you’re going to fail, but in spite of this, or maybe because of this, life just keeps getting better!
In a way we become desensitized to the horrible trauma of experiencing what we thought was the worst thing that could ever happen in our life. After my husband died and later closing my business due to fire, I had to ask what worse could happen?
But there was more.
You know the really great thing? At one point later on, after a devastating, financial blow, I sat on my front step still kind of in shock from what had happened, and I realized–I really wasn’t that upset. I knew right then and there, without a doubt, it really didn’t matter in the whole scheme of things. It was just one small blip in my life.
Since then I have been able (although not always right away!) to separate myself from my circumstances and know that there are good times and there are bad times. I will succeed and I will fail, but the important thing is that as long as I keep going on, my life just keeps getting better and better!
My successes have become greater. My dreams have become bigger. And my horizons have become broader.
It is a natural progression of living an authentic life where we are not weighted with the fear of our own power. Our power to push through the boundaries of what we thought was “as good as it gets” and move into the realm of “better than we could ever have imagined”!
I think Marianne Williamson said it best:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
Leave A Comment