#9 Thunder and Lightning

The other day I had an epiphany at the tail-end of a workout at the gym. As is part of my ritual, I wrapped up my workout and made for the steam room. As I was sitting there, recovering from all the muscles that I had blasted, a pretty lady walked in. She seemed different to me somehow, and I sat there trying to figure out why. Then one of her friends walked in, and the reason became clear: they were foreigners! I caught them both speaking Russian, and I started following the train of thought that followed in my head. 

Most of my initial thoughts were negative. Stuff like “you could barely manage to start a conversation with her, let alone impress her! She’s out of your league! She’s far too sophisticated, and you’re just a simple kid!” I listened as whatever was on my mind was spilled out. But then, something interesting happened: I just started imagining otherwise! I plotted out the things I could say to start a conversation, from “no way! Another Russian-speaker is in town?!?” to “hey, I heard you speaking Russian. What’s your story? Where do you come from?” Within minutes, I had a good little list of things I could say. 

And with each new idea, the person that I imagined myself to be, the person that was talking to her, began to shift. The “simple kid” morphed into a suave gentleman, one as sophisticated as she was (or, at least, as I saw her to be.) Unfortunately, I spent too much time talking to myself to shift to her, but I think the takeaways are there all the same. 

Sometimes, you must light your horizons with lightning. You have to quickly jump into action before you have time to let doubt sink in. You don’t need to have everything figured out and all of your insecurities mastered before you do something big or scary. Sometimes doing it before you have a chance to be scared will change everything that needs to be changed. I think one way we can conquer insecurity is by simply acting before the voices can hold us down. Kind of like a stone skipping across the water: there’s nothing that can make it skip any better than simply getting that rock moving!

But if you struggle so much that you can’t get up and moving, you have to shake the earths of your mind with a mighty rumble first. You have to do what I did and plot it all out. If you can’t do it, picture yourself doing it. That will be a first step to actually jumping to. Then maybe next time you will get a little closer, and eventually you will begin to do whatever it was you said you couldn’t. And as you learn to act without second-guessing, you will begin to see glimmers of hope. Those impossible things will seem a little more doable, and your life will begin to climb to those frozen heights. 

So take some time to work on acting without hesitation. Go to a restaurant, even if it’s just fast-food, and order the first thing you see on the menu. Go for a drive and spend 10-20 minutes taking the first turn that comes to mind. Go to a Target or Walmart and fill your cart with the first 5 items that come to mind (within budget, of course.) And see if you can come up with your own “no-hesitation” exercises. And feel free to share if it leads to any good adventures. 

So I pray that you learn to light your horizons with thunder and lightning. That hope finds you through this peculiar form of impulsiveness. And I pray that your life elevates to even greater heights with each passing day!

Until next time

May Peace be your Guide.