Change is hard for me, just like it is for everybody else, and I find myself place holding on to things I should've let go a long time ago. I find myself staying in places longer than I should. I find myself staying still when I should be moving forward.
And that moving on, that whole moving forward thing, is scary. Because it means that I am leaving what I knew or what I was certain of behind. That for some crazy reason, I am choosing the unfamiliar over the comforts of the past and present.But a part of me knows that it's the only way. It's the only way to grow. It's the only way to figure out what I really want and what I really need.
It's scary, propelling yourself into the unknown, hoping for something better, knowing that something different might await you, and not knowing if you'll like it more. Putting yourself out there is hard, thinking of the possibility of failure is terrifying, trying new things is a little overwhelming at times. But, you know, it's the only way.
Because the staying still is the worst part of the whole process. It's the lingering too long in the comfort of the life you have that hurts the worst. Knowing that there is more out there, but being too scared or too complacent to try and find it.
It's the staying still that stifles who you are, that slowly but surely kills those dreams you once had. It's the staying still that keeps you comfortably numb to the callings of your soul.
And there comes a time, where you realize you have to go and that you can't stay where you've been. There comes a time where you realize that staying still and constantly wondering "what if" is a much worse fate than actually trying and getting an answer.
I'm unsettled, unsure, uncertain, and uncomfortable, but I would rather be that and a million other un-words that I haven't thought of, than to leave so much of my potential untapped.
So here's to the unknown and figuring out what's actually out there.
In a 1910, two volume biography called “Edison: His Life and Inventions”, an anecdote was shared by an associate of Thomas Edison’s named Walter S. Mallory. Edison and his researchers had been laboring for five months, at that point, on the development of a nickel-iron battery.
ReplyDelete"I found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. He was seated at this bench testing, figuring, and planning. I then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and I said: ‘Isn’t it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven’t been able to get any results?’ Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: ‘Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.’
Edison confirmed this anecdote in a 1921 article for American Magazine, written by B.C. Forbes:
"I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances. I recall that after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed ‘to find out anything.’ I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way. We sometimes learn a lot from our failures if we have put into the effort the best thought and work we are capable of."
When we have fears, such as fear of failure, we need to drag our fears kicking and screaming into the light, and in that light...we will see the truth of our fear...and the truth will take away it's power.
When we prayerfully move forward into the darkness, we will have an experience like Nephi: "And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do." 1 Nephi 4:6