Fear can save your life.

When what I’m up against deserves a legit fight or flight, I’m glad fear exists. The adrenalin it produces is a quick-burn fuel that can get me going.

But, what if fighting and flighting weren’t our only options when fear came to the party?

What if that feeling of fear existed for a higher calling… like a clue to a hidden treasure?

When I take time to pause and consider, I am amazed at how much more resource I have available to me in the face of fear. Add some humility, a willingness to work hard, and better still, a willingness to fail – or as Sun Tzu says… a willingness to die before you go into battle – fear will lose its hold.

What if fear was a sign that opportunity was knocking?

If I’m scared of my “not being as creative as that person over there” or “my business failing” or “the economy can’t support me“, I can attack the disabling part (fear) and embrace the objects in creative ways (the colleague, the prospects, the real opportunities in the existing economy).

When Emerson suggested to “… always do what you are afraid to do” I don’t think he was kidding. I think he was giving you and me our marching orders to unprecedented possibility.

“Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate.” – Emerson

Be you at any cost.

It’s a mantra I hold pretty close. I pretend it’s a voice from above or within reminding me that my best hope at flourishing is to embrace the lot that is me.

But what do I do on days when I don’t like me very much?

If I’m smart, I lean in to the parts I don’t like.

Wait! But what if I’m in the midst of external criticism while others are producing stuff that blows me away – or worse… I think their stuff is lame and everyone else is celebrating it – what then? What if this is all happening and deep down, I’m just tired and disappointed with what is showing up in my life?

If I’m committed to being a creative, I go again.

Better yet, I double down on me. Any alternative is a sucker bet. In fact, I’m not even sure there’s an alternative. It may be the most sure wager I know. Of course if there’s truth here, I suspect I’m not the only game in town. It might be time to reclaim your chips too and put ‘em back to work on you.

“Our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.” – Emerson

A lot of life is preloaded.

My family, my socio-economic start, my race, my geography… I had no control over any of them and yet I live under them. When circumstances are favorable, I feel like I’ve won the lottery. When my back hurts or my internet goes out, I curse the gods.

The question I’m interested in is where do I take a stand regardless of my circumstances?

What do I care so much about that no thing will stop my commitment to it?

In the chatter about the “problems in our industry”, I’m believing that there are none. If there are problems, they are with me, they are with you or they are with us. “The industry” doesn’t exist apart from those three realities.

Problems live in that cowardly place where I expect all return and no investment.

Where must I go all-in? Where must you?

“There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.” – Emerson

How do you feel when you’re around confident people?

When folks are authentically themselves, without pretense or veneer, I’m not sure I could be more drawn in. Proximity to “the real” is like being close to a fountain of life. It invites me to be more truly myself.

From a distance however, I can be deceived into thinking I’m experiencing the real when I’m not. Kind of like seeing someone on television and then bumping into them in person. There’s a qualitative difference when I see them in the flesh and not through the screen.

It’s not that what I’m experience is bad or good. I’m making a quality of experience observation here and not a moral assessment.

It’s just not accurate to think that the proxy is the same thing as the real. What I’m experiencing is more of an appearance or replica than the actual.

Kind of reminds me of Rene Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe.

He was making the metaphysical distinction that a representation of a pipe is not the same thing as an actual pipe. Not only is the observation clever, it is resourceful.

As I got to thinking about that painting, I was reminded of the “representations” I make up in my head about the cool things other people create – pictures, businesses, presentations, words on paper. Even the best versions in my mind of what I think they are creating is not the same as the experience they enjoy when they actually create the thing.

Turns out the only way to experience that first hand is to create it on my own.

Seems to me it has to be more satisfying to experience the real act of creating first hand than to try and get a proxy experience of what I see others create, even if my admiration for their creation is greater than my own.

Turns out that the only road to discover a vision that is authentically mine – that is aligned with what I am made to deliver – is to get on the road I’m made to travel and make it so.