I recently had a daydream where all of the changes and craziness of everyday life had me looking out over a cliff of a vast canyon. At the very edge of the cliff where I am standing is a really dense fog; I can’t see the other side at all. My anxiety wants me to think of a million different ways to build a bridge or fly into the fog with some kind of jetpack or plane, but at last, I won’t allow that anxious energy to take hold. Thinking will never outwork actually doing.

Is this even a cliff? I am going to take a step into the fog and see what happens.

We often look at life’s challenges as obstacles, and we fight with so much energy thinking of ways around them that we get tired building and we give up. We fix ourselves at that cliff’s edge and never move, sometimes we even back away.

Life never get’s easier, we just get stronger at living it; if we choose to try a little bit harder.

With a little bit of courage, we can tiptoe ever so carefully over the edge of our cliffs. Being careful of what may happen, we slowly get enough courage to take a big step over that edge. What many of us discover through deliberate, mindful practice and general acceptance that life will always be unpredictable is that there is no cliff’s edge at all. Just dense fog of the future that lays ahead. Once you know that there is no edge, you can walk into the thick fog and have no risk of falling, then the world opens up and becomes yours to behold.

Anxiety is merely a protection mechanism created by our minds to guard us against absolutely nothing. NADDA! We perceive anxiety as a way to ready us for the eventual reality that may happen. But 99% of the time, that reality never occurs. We waste 99% of our energy to protect us from 1% of our minds thoughts.

Go ahead, take that big step into the fog. I promise you won’t fall. Life doesn’t push over the brave, it only leaves behind those who are standing on an imaginary cliff.

X-XC