Do One Thing That Scares You

Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “Do one thing every day that scares you” was not about infusing fear but about abandoning our refuge to experience a first, whether it be a wonder or an adventure. Yet not all of us are risk-takers and therefore prefer to stay in the known. If we choose to play it safe rather than advance into the unforeseen, wouldn’t that be a greater risk? Doing the thing that scares us doesn’t guarantee a positive outcome but to find out, we have to break the rules we established for ourselves.

For example…. recently, my husband, Ed and I went with our ski group to Crested Butte, CO for a week of skiing. To his credit, Ed took up skiing ten years ago when we first got married and given he is an engineer by profession, he believes his technique is not up to speed with the more advanced. (I beg to differ.) That being said, Ed perused the terrain map prior to our trip and decided what runs he was going to ski before we even made it to our destination. A friend and I tried to persuade him to think outside the box or in this case, ski up a notch but he already made up his mind to ski the beginner runs which meant he would not “see and ski” certain parts of the mountain.

On Ed’s first day, he was determined to ski Houston, a green run that was within his calculated parameters. To start, a friend and I decided to ski with Ed on this perfect bluebird day. Thus, I took the lead and in doing so, took the wrong turn (directions are not my forte). We ended up on an intermediate run that was not part of Ed’s anticipated plan. When we realized my faux pas, Ed had no choice but to follow us down. And he did so effortlessly. Once we reached the bottom, we had to take the chair lift up to the top which presented another challenge. Ed would have to ski the vast bowl down to the base. Ed not only made it to the bottom, but he got to see the view of the majestic mountain range and had lunch at Paradise Inn located near the top! More so, he found that doing the one thing that scared him increased his skiing capability and bolstered his confidence.

Not all of us ski but we’ve all had the opportunity to do one thing that scared us or challenged us. What situation were you in when making the decision to take a risk or play it safe? And how did that experience change your mindset going forward?