A friend sent out a recent Tedx Pasadena Talk by a friend of hers entitled Making the Jump:  The Year of No Fear.  The speaker, Grace Killelea, begins with a very funny story of how — at age 52 and weighing 247 pounds — she decided to go skydiving to begin a “Year of No Fear.”  In spite of the fact that she was a Senior VP for a Fortune 50 company, she had decided she needed to undertake a personal “Year of No Fear” because she was “afraid she would always feel afraid.”  Research shows that she is not alone.

Killelea goes on to ask, “What would a jump look like for you?”  Based on the comments to the video, fears range from personal relationships, to job and work satisfaction, to the current political climate.  Killelea’s point is that we all have our fears.  Facing our fears “doesn’t have to be big and bold, like jumping out of a plane.”  What’s important is that you “identify (your jump), and then decide what’s keeping you from doing it.”  As she notes, she hasn’t always succeeded, but her “superpower is that I’m afraid every day…and I jump anyway.”  She plans her actions — she didn’t jump out of the plane without a parachute, for instance — but continues on to say, “What matters is that you take action.  Jumping requires that you do something.”

The talk ends with her lessons learned from the year of no fear.  “It’s okay to be afraid…jump anyway” is the first lesson learned.  The next two would be spoilers for her talk, so I’ll skip over those.  But her last lesson learned is that “You only regret the jumps that you don’t make.”

“So remember,” she ends, “good things come to those who jump.”

Could 2018 be your year of no fear?

A Year of No Fear

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB