Do the thing that scares you

Fear is not something that goes away as you age. Maybe you no longer feel nervous and frightened to get on the Ferris wheel or jump off the diving board. The fear looks different. It shifts, but it doesn’t go away.

I am 52 years young and I still battle fear. Fear of failing, of looking foolish. Of admitting to the world that I have hopes and dreams and ambitions.

I want to be a writer. And not just a writer, but a really good one. A published author.

There, I said it. Why is that so hard?

Because it is human nature to fear reaching for something we might not be able to attain. It is human nature to fear being seen.

This is what it looks like when my daughter does the thing that scares her. There is a particular dive she gets in her head about, even though it is one she’s done many times before. She stands at the end of the board, full of doubt, her stomach in knots. But then she takes a step, then two, and does the dive anyway.

There was one time when she didn’t go off the board. It was the championship meet, the last of the season, and she desperately wanted to win. Tiny and powerful at only 8 years old, she stood on the board in front of hundreds of people, frozen with fear, paralyzed by her ambition. She was better than her competition and could perform much harder dives. Had she done even mediocre versions of her best dives, she would have been at the top of the podium. The judges waited patiently, the crowd chanted her name. I said a little prayer for her feet to move. There were tears, her thin shoulders shook, until she finally turned and walked back down the ladder to solid ground.

It was a day neither of us will ever forget. As a parent, I questioned whether the pressure she felt to win had come from me. Had I pushed too hard? Didn’t she love the sport? Wasn’t she having fun in what was meant to be a relaxed summer dive program? I can still remember it like yesterday.

She bounced back fast, as kids do. Just after the competition, she was celebrating with ice cream and splashing in the pool with her friends. I watched as she went off the diving board, flawlessly competing the dives that had held her frozen in place only hours before. But she learned an important lesson at a very young age. Not competing, not trying, feels far worse than any failure ever could.

When I watch my daughter dive now—every time she bounds to the end of the board and allows herself to fly through the air without knowing how she will land—I’m reminded that it is the trying that matters. Do the thing that scares you. The reward is inherent. You’ve already won.

And in that vein, I am pitching my memoir to agents as part of a nonfiction writers roundtable this weekend. I will read my query and first pages to a group of experienced writers and industry insiders. I might make a misstep and smack the water. I’m risking what feels like my whole heart by sharing my story. I am terrified to read aloud, to let myself be seen.

There are no guarantees, no outcome is certain. The only thing I can control is the trying. Submit the query. Jump off the board.

Do the thing that scares you. It’s how you feel the most alive.

Thank you for reading Work in Progress!

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