Monday Spark: To get to where you want to be, you have to pass through the scary part.

Many of us have wild and exciting dreams for our freelance businesses and companies, but don’t do what it takes to make those dreams come true.

Why not? Because taking the leap is often downright scary.

Well…you’re right. Doing something new is always scary.

A couple of weeks ago I went skydiving for the first time. It is something I have wanted to do for a while. I put off actually doing it for a few months, because as much as I wanted the experience, I found the prospect of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane downright terrifying.

But…to get to the good part, you first have to get past the scary part.

So I got into the plane, along with my son Thomas, and we flew up to an altitude of 13,500 feet. This was a tandem free-fall, so I was strapped to an instructor.

And out we went.

To sum up the experience, the first 4 or 5 seconds are scary, and the remained of the experience is hugely exhilarating.

To put that into pictures, here is my face before and after that 5 second mark.

The image on the left isn’t the most flattering picture. But that’s the kind of face you pull when you’re scared silly.

The image on the right was taken about 10 seconds later. Now I’m smiling.

Maybe you think my smile seems a little forced. Well, that’s what happens when you are falling at 200 kilometer an hour. The air is blasting into your face with such force it’s extremely difficult to change or hold any kind of facial expression.

By the time I was on the ground I was laughing like a crazy thing. I loved it!

BTW – if you haven’t done this yourself, and want a sense of what the experience is like, here is how I can best describe it. Imagine all your feelings of fear and fun when riding a scary rollercoaster. The scarier the better. Now put together the combined experience of the 10 scariest rides you have taken, bottle that in a vial, draw it up into a syringe and inject yourself, so you get all the highs of those combined rides hitting your brain within the span of about 5 seconds.

Welcome to skydiving!

Anyway, I’m trying to make a point here.

If your freelance business is at point A, and you dream about it being at point B, but feel anxious or scared about making the leap, you’ll never make that dream come true unless you push yourself through the scary part.

If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it.

What differentiates the most successful freelancers is that they took that leap forward from being ordinary.

And think about it, if you do take the leap from A to B, what is the worst that could happen?

Not such a big deal when you consider the worst case scenario when jumping out of an airplane!

Related Resources:

My ebook – Affirmations for Freelancers

My coaching service for freelancers…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…