Tag: Taking Chances

I Want To Learn To Love Dancing In The Rain

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There’s this saying (pictured above) that life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, but rather it’s about learning to dance in the rain. I absolutely love this saying, but I think I’ve only recently realized that I am the person who waits. I am that person that will stand on the curb and wait for dozens of cars to pass before just taking the chance and running across to the other side of the street. I am the person that once the sky opens up and the rain begins to fall, I immediately run indoors to keep from getting wet. I am that person who is scared of what’s coming if I don’t already know what’s going to happen.

I would like to think that if I was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime that I would just take that opportunity without over analyzing every single aspect of what could go wrong but I know myself a bit better than that. I just turned another year older last Friday and it got me to thinking of, not just the things I wished I had gotten to do by now (as most people did, I had a 30 by 30 list of sorts), but also, I thought about the things I would put on a bucket list today as I inch closer to 45. I thought of all of the places I have yet to go and the things I want to try, things I would do if money were not an obstacle. Things I want to just throw caution to the wind for and just take the leap and jump. I stopped short of compiling yet another list for fear that once again the items on it will go unchecked.

On the flip side, if I keep waiting for all the money I need to do these things, or for the right time to do them, essentially for all of the stars to align, so to speak, then I could be waiting forever, and it’s possible that it would never happen. I don’t want to let another decade of my life go by without having done something, anything, that wasn’t completely mapped out and analyzed to death. I have yet to ever get on a plane and travel anywhere and I don’t want to have never left the country. I’ve never even been to New York, which is sad considering it is the one state that I have always dreamed of living in. So what do I do with all of these desires and so many real or imagined obstacles standing in my way?

That is when learning to dance in the rain comes into play. Now I can’t say I will never over analyze a decision ever again because, as I said before, I know myself a bit better than that. But I think taking chances and risks in life, particularly for someone as analytical as myself, requires a conscious effort. It will require me to get out of my own head every time an opportunity arises for me to do something that I want to do. It will require for me to just live a little and stop worrying about all of the unknowns. Most importantly, it will require me to remember to bring my umbrella with me even if the forecast doesn’t call for rain because I never know when the sky will open up and give me the opportunity to dance. If you should have the opportunity to dance in the rain or run indoors for cover, I sure hope that you decide to dance!

Until next time… #BeAdventurous #BeOpen #BeFearless

Jimmetta Carpenter

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No Risk = No Reward

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No Risk No Reward 2

Children are fearless and their tenacity has no boundaries. It’s wonderful and exciting to watch a child get an idea for something and because they have absolutely no fear and no worries about rejection they go for any and everything. I wonder at what age we lose that fearless, tenacious spirit. Adults are far less likely to try new things, unlike children, because all of the fear seeps in. They wonder, what if I get hurt? What if it doesn’t work? What if someone else does this better than me? What if no one gets it? What if no one accepts it? Children miraculously don’t worry about such things. They just go for it! If it fails they simply get back up and try again as if the failure never happened to begin with. Why do we lose that as we get older?

In my more recent journey of becoming more spiritually grounded I knew that one of the things that I needed to work on within myself and that needed to be changed was my many different degrees of fear. I have a lot of defense mechanisms that have become sort of a crutch for me. One particularly bad one that I’ve been trying to break is one where I play out all of the worst case scenarios in my head when thinking about attempting something new or, in my case as a writer, submitting something. And while it is good to be realistic about the good and bad of something so that you can be prepared for either outcome, in my case dwelling on the possible negative outcomes have somehow held me back from even attempting things at all. It wasn’t intentional but I would find ways to talk myself out of doing something or submitting something because I had convinced myself that it was never going to be accepted anyway so why bother.

I have no idea when it happened? When I began to think about all of what made me afraid of going after the dreams I have instead of the wonderful things that can come from achieving them. I wasn’t always so fearful and I used to like taking risks but perhaps my risks were met with too many rejections and not enough rewards. But that’s life isn’t it. Looking back on all of the “failures” I have had in attempting my dreams I can ascertain the many lessons that came out of them. However, I am also realizing that some of the more recent “failures” I have had happened, not because of the risks that didn’t pan out, but rather because of the risks that I was too afraid to take to begin with.

A lot of times we don’t try new things because we can’t predict the outcome. We don’t want to fail so we think that it’s better to never actually try. Somehow it is more appealing to not put ourselves out there because then it means that we can’t get hurt, our ideas can’t get rejected, and no one can tell us that what we’ve poured our hearts into is somehow not good enough. However, that also means that our ideas don’t get heard at all and that what we have effectively poured our hearts into just sits around never being seen by anyone. If we never leave the place that feels comfortable for us, the place that’s safe for us then we miss out on so many things and we will never truly succeed. At that point we would simply be living in our fears instead of living up to our dreams. So, while our comfort zones may make us feel protected we can’t stay there if expect to get to where it is we are destined to end up.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

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There’s No Lid on the Box that is Your Comfort Zone

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No lid on the box

So let’s talk about our comfort zones! No one understands needing to have a routine more than I do. I am that person that annoyingly has to have a plan, a plan to map out the plan, and have all of the plans organized in a very particular way (I also have OCD issues but that’s a story for another blog post). I don’t say this as if I believe this to necessarily be a great thing, but rather, it is one of my many flaws that I wish I could do away with.

Obviously it’s good to have some organization when you are prioritizing your goals. However, sometimes I feel hindered by my obsessive need to over-plan and excessively organize things. It’s all done in an effort to stay within my comfort zone and admittedly it has held me back from doing a lot of things and it has in many ways perpetuated the fear that I’ve always carried along with me for most of my adult life.

My fear has stopped me so many times from taking chances and seizing opportunities but that need to remain in my comfort zone and sticking with my routine has only enhanced those fears. I suppose you could say that I had found a sense of security within my comfort zone and that being safe was far more enticing than living in the unknown realities of what it means to take risks.

I don’t advocate to anyone that they stay inside the box that they’ve created for themselves. I have been trying to get out of my own box for many years now but there’s always that invisible lid that I imagine will hit me on the head and knock me back down. I have been diligently working to change that about myself and I’m going to be open and welcoming to all opportunities that may come my way. If you haven’t already, start knocking down those walls of comfort that have been surrounding you. The only lid that is on the box that you have confined yourself to is the lid that you imagined is real.

 

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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