See that picture? That’s me. Crying with joy, because I just rappelled down a 40-foot icefall halfway into a day-long cross-country ski tour. I signed on for that little adventure knowing full well what I was getting into. And I was scared to death until I got past it and was able to relax the rest of the afternoon.

Some of us love to scare ourselves, we embrace fear. Maybe you go to horror films (not I!), you jump off airplanes (again, not I!), you register for a marathon, you take on speaking engagements, you quit your job and start your own business, you shift the direction of the business you own. We all have our different thresholds.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’ve been surrounded by fear in various manifestations and I’ve been analyzing how it can paralyze and how it can catalyze. (more…)