Facing Fears

The subject of this post may lead one to think something adventurous has occurred in my life recently.

Maybe I tried rock climbing? (Which my crazy husband is trying to convince me to do. He's crazy. I don't even climb past the 3rd rung on the ladder.)

Maybe I've signed up to go sky diving?

Or base jumping?

Or maybe I'm stepping into a jumping castle full of a large group of wild children during flu season. (another persistent fear of mine...bouncing, germs)

 

How about........

 

 

Connor Jaeger in the Olympics?

 

No...he doesn't scare me.

 

It's what he's perched on!

 

Swimming blocks.

 



 Let us all take a moment to let our heart rate come down. Wipe the sweat beds off our face.

 

 I don't know about you all, but the pure thought of diving off a platform that is whopping 1-2 feet above the a pool of water sends shear terror through my spine!!!

 

I have swam my entire life, but never learned to dive. In swimming lessons, they tried hard to teach me - but I would panic every time my body would start to hit the water. My "dive" would transform into this eel-like flop into a cannon ball.

 

Finally, my teachers just gave up. Rightfully so.

 

So I, too, gave up. Learning a new skill is harder the older you get - so I succumbed to the fact that diving isn't my "thing".

 

Then this summer one evening after dinner, we were out swimming in our pool. Ryan was stunned by the fact that I cannot dive. I showed him my feeble attempts probably 5 times, he couldn't bear to watch any longer.

 

We spent a good hour working at it. And sure enough - by the end of the night, I was diving.

 

Now, I'm not going to say it's pretty - but it's a proper arm-head-body dive-ish-plunge. It passes.

 

Well, I am thankful for that today - because in masters swim practice, our coach had us do relays for our main set was.......*gulp* off the blocks!!!

 

I'm sure my coach and team-mates thought I was kind of strange. I had the biggest, silliest, ear-to-ear grin the whole time! And at one point someone even complimented me on my dive. Instead of me saying, "Thank you", the appropriate response. I chimed back, "Hell yeah it was! Was it really?!Cool!!

 

I guess my take-home message from this was - facing your fears (no matter how silly they may seem) rarely has a bad outcome. I didn't even care about my times during the relay, because I was just so excited to be diving like one of the "cool kids" (well, actually I'm probably the closest thing to a kid in terms of age on my team).

 

What silly, irrational fear do you hold? After I shared mine, no one should be hesitant to share. As mine is pretty ridiculous!!