fear establishes your boundaries

I was looking back through notes I wrote earlier in the year and found this one that I wrote less than a week out from my marathon.

Even though the race is over now, the message is one that I’ll continue to come back to as I embark upon more challenges in the coming years.

Here it is:

I heard a great quote from Erwin McManus recently. He said: “Your fear establishes the boundaries of your freedom. And so when you're defining your fears, you're actually defining your personal boundaries.”

This coming weekend I’ll run my first marathon. For years, whenever I thought about the idea of doing a marathon, my brain screeched “No way! You’re not a runner.”

I told myself that I was just staying within my chosen identity as a meathead. But what I was really doing was letting fear form the boundaries of my life.

Ever since I started doing different fitness challenges 2 years ago, I’ve used fear as my compass. Whatever I was most scared of, is what I signed up for next.

The marathon took a lot longer to come around to than any of the other competitions I’ve done, but I finally let fear steer me towards it, and here we are.

The process has already taught me a lot, and it’s been a very forced expansion of my boundaries and comfort zone.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not pretty damn scared for this thing. But I’m reframing that fear as excitement, and feeling gratitude that I’ve trained and gotten myself to a place where I can even think about taking on something that I thought was impossible for me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the fear of the thing (and the restrictive boundaries that fear places on your growth and identity) is worse than doing the actual thing. So just send it.

LFG.