What would you do if you weren't afraid?

A few years ago, I was in the audience at a conference and one of the speakers asked us the life-changing question above.

I love this question, because it forces us to get real about what we're running from.

Immediately, a microphone was passed around to the audience members, and to my surprise, many people took the mic and courageously volunteered to answer the question.

Their responses were fascinating:

🎤 "I would come 'out of the closet' to my parents."

🎤 "I would start a YouTube channel and share my poetry online."

🎤 "I would finally move out of my hometown and start a new life overseas."

🎤 "I would launch my business, despite all of my friends telling me that it won't work."

🎤 "I would find a therapist and finally address the trauma I've been running from for most of my life."

🎤 "I would report my abusive boss to HR, and if they didn't do anything, I would take my documentation to the local news."

Those are only the responses that I can list from memory, but listening to all of those answers (and many more) was an eye-opening experience for me.

The reality is that almost everyone is stopping short of living their best lives, due to fear.

So, let me ask you: What would you do if you weren't afraid?

For real, sit with that question for a minute.

Maybe it’s finally publishing your first Substack post.

Maybe it’s finally having that difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding.

Maybe it’s finally sharing the “real you” with the world.

Regardless of what it is, after you get the answer to that question, why not make the soul-nourishing decision to actually do what you said you would do if you weren't afraid?

Since we're all scared of something, we're left with this binary choice when facing the things we fear:

1️⃣ Be scared, and do the thing anyway (Potential outcome: The thing gets done, while you gain courage and confidence).

-OR-

2️⃣ Be scared, and do nothing (Potential outcome: Nothing gets done, while you lose confidence and stay scared).

Hopefully we agree that only one of those options makes any sense.

The truth is that we need to act in spite of our fears way more often than we currently do.

If you're up for the challenge of facing your fears, you might be surprised to realize that what you're afraid of, really isn't all that scary after all ❤️.