Who's Ready to Live Fearlessly?

[inverse Paranoid]

Are there people out there who are truly ready to embrace fearlessness, and encourage others as they release their fear and begin to live more and more authentically?

Does anybody here truly follow the principles Steve describes in Judge Not and Share Your Shame?

About a week ago I started a project called “Live Free or Kill Yourself: One Man’s Quest to Face His Fears or Die a Coward.” It’s a 30 day experiment in facing my fears of rejection and looking badly, every day, for 30 days straight. The consequence for missing one of my daily requirements is that I must commit suicide (no I’m not mentally unstable, nor is this a cry for help, it’s simply a no-holds-barred commitment to change).

I've taken a lot of heat for this and many people have chosen to distance themselves from me.

I started off by sharing all my scary thoughts (those thoughts that creep into your head and make you wish you never would have thought them in the first plcae) and this allowed me to almost immediately reclaim my power over shame. A lot of people were shocked by this but I kept on rolling. (full list of 18 tweets here)

Then my dear friend and mentor offered to cut me completely out of her life so that I might experience the ultimate form of rejection and have a chance to overcome it. My response to this surprised the hell out of me, as it gave me the opportunity to reclaim everything I had projected onto her and lifted me into a temporary state of total freedom that I took advantage of by peeing my pants (in the middle of writing the email) twice and then looking for even greater ways to assert my power over embarrassment. She later chose to completely end our relationship, but I was so grounded in my own power that losing one of the most precious and influential persons in my life didn’t even cause me to flinch. (full post here)

But now, I'm starting to feel really alone. As if everyone who's supporting me is doing so from a safe distance, waiting to see how things turn out. Wanting to make sure they're not hit by the tidal wave of criticism that might hit me at any time.

This is totally fine, and I honor their desire for safety and security; but at the same time, there has to be someone out there who's ready to accept me completely as I am right now. Someone out there who's not afraid to share the full truth about who they are and love themselves for it anyway.

I just want to be my truly unique self and allow other people to do the same. And I know I'm not the only one.So if you're that kind of person, let it be known! Or if you know a place where people who've taken the plunge into full-blown authentic living might be found, share it with the rest of us!

[James81]

Count me in. (not on the suicide part, but the other stuff I'll lap up like a puppy )

What do I gotta do?

[James81]

And by the "not on the suicide part," I mean that that's not the consequence that I personally will choose for this.

But you are free to choose that if you want, cause I don't judge you for it or anything like that.

[inverse Paranoid]

Originally Posted by James81

Count me in. (not on the suicide part, but the other stuff I'll lap up like a puppy )

Awesome!

What do I gotta do?

What do you want to do?
How public do you want to be about it?
How can I help?

Your enthusiasm coupled with a talk I had earlier today has inspired me to turn this into a movement. And nobody is more important to a movement than "that first follower who turns a lone nut into a leader." (Though this movement has nothing to do with following me, it's all about facing your own fears and joyfully moving forward into the life they were holding you back from.)

If you're ready to live fearlessly, I'm ready to do anything (joyously) within my power to help.

So that brings us back to:

What do you want to do?
How public do you want to be about it?
How can I help?

There are no wrong answers because you can't **** up at the game of being yourself.

[BillyTheAdult]

I don't think I could go to the level you're talking about, but I have already been making MAJOR changes in my life over the past 6-8 months. It has at times been very scary and very tough but overall I feel like it has been going well. I have at times experienced as much personal growth in like a week's time as some people probably have in a few years.

I can really sympathize with the feeling alone part, but I think that is a sign you're probably doing great things. Most people almost never change, so when you do they won't usually come with you. It scares them, and they will all say you've changed and you're being a bad person. I personally decided that letting people talk about without caring was a gift I was giving to them. I have personally left a number of people behind including some who I had formally considered some of my best friends, and i will continue to do so where ever necessary. It's lonely at the top because most people never make it there.

[Divajules]

Hello inverse Paranoid,
OMG, I absolutely nearly pee'd MY pants when I read your full article! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it appealed to some perverse part of me that I don't allow out (like hardly EVER) but seeing you let it out unabashedly just made me roar with laughter. Thanks so much for that! I can't stop thinking about the candy cane, hahahahaha!

I guess I'm a bit like the others in that I am with you on living more fearlessly but don't think I'm willing to go to the extremes you are, LOL! However, I do love the idea and I'm on board with the overall concept. I love anything that requires people to get honest and live more authentically. You are a good example and I applaud you for it!

[inverse Paranoid]

Originally Posted by Divajules

Hello inverse Paranoid,
OMG, I absolutely nearly pee'd MY pants when I read your full article! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it appealed to some perverse part of me that I don't allow out (like hardly EVER) but seeing you let it out unabashedly just made me roar with laughter. Thanks so much for that! I can't stop thinking about the candy cane, hahahahaha!

LOL, thanks Diva. That was by far one of the most memorable and empowering experiences of my life!

I guess I'm a bit like the others in that I am with you on living more fearlessly but don't think I'm willing to go to the extremes you are, LOL! However, I do love the idea and I'm on board with the overall concept. I love anything that requires people to get honest and live more authentically. You are a good example and I applaud you for it!

Yeah, I certainly don't expect others to emulate my tendency toward extremes. I do however hope that I can learn some practical lessons from my extreme experimentation and pass those learnings onto the people who are ready to embrace them.

Thanks a lot for the support!

Originally Posted by BillyTheAdult

I don't think I could go to the level you're talking about, but I have already been making MAJOR changes in my life over the past 6-8 months. It has at times been very scary and very tough but overall I feel like it has been going well. I have at times experienced as much personal growth in like a week's time as some people probably have in a few years.

Awesome! Growing at your own pace is essential. As far as how fast we can grow, well my Grandma put it to me this way, "We all have limitations, the question is whether or not they are self-imposed limitations."

I can really sympathize with the feeling alone part, but I think that is a sign you're probably doing great things. Most people almost never change, so when you do they won't usually come with you. It scares them, and they will all say you've changed and you're being a bad person. I personally decided that letting people talk about without caring was a gift I was giving to them. I have personally left a number of people behind including some who I had formally considered some of my best friends, and i will continue to do so where ever necessary. It's lonely at the top because most people never make it there.

This is probably true on many levels, but so easy to doubt at times. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really doing anything worthwhile with my days, or if I've just created an elaborate distraction to hide from what's really important.

I think part of the reason why I have such an extremist disposition is when others ask "Why didn't I think of this sooner?" I ask myself, "Am I doing enough?"

It's hard, because I see how much more I could be doing, and yet I'm still held back by fear in certain areas. I guess it's a process of figuring out what fears are holding me back, and then finding a safe way to work through them. But it's tricky because fears exist on different levels. I can clearly overcome my fears on the levels where I've faced them and reclaimed my power, but then on other levels they still hold me back. It's like a turf war.

I try not to look at fear as my enemy, but it's so easy to blame it for holding me back. Holy ****, maybe that's the insight. Acknowledging that fear is holding me back all but exempts me from taking responsibility. Maybe the greater question is why am I still generating fearful thoughts? What fear-conducive beliefs am I holding on to? And what can I do to let go of them?

[Boldnut]

Man. You're badass for taking this challenge, I glimpsed at your blog noticed new posts, glad you're still alive.

[AaronB]

One approach to freeing yourself from fear is to do the very things you are afraid of most. You could call this living outside your comfort zone. It's finding ways to press yourself outside of the restrictions you have made for yourself.

Ideally we would find that all our self imposed restrictions are baloney. That there is nothing dangerous on the other side of them. It reminds me of "The Village". I really enjoyed that movie. It's doing hand to hand combat against your own personal boogey man. It is certainly an expression of bravery. A standing up against that which used to make you shrink.

Imagine a Schizophrenic patient. He is running and cowering from all his internal demons. That is how I see myself when I experience fear. For the most part I'm no different than any other schizophrenic person afraid of shadows in the dark. I could teach myself to face those shadows, but in reality they aren't even there except for the fact that I can imagine them. Perhaps if I fought off all my invisible demons, then I would stop making them up. While this might work, I haven't had the greatest results in this direction. Perhaps I didn't terrify myself enough to make myself really motivated? My favorite approach is to recognize that I'm making stuff up, find out why I'm making it up in the first place, and finally realize that there is nothing to be afraid of here. This leads to a really deep sense of peace. It leads to a quietness. It leads me to no longer making up shadows in the dark.

I prefer a flashlight over a sword when fighting against my own shadow.

While I believe that our own personal shadows can be limiting and frustrating and very painful at times, I have found the approach of seeking integration and inner harmony to be the fastest approach to finding complete freedom. A difficulty in measuring this is that while I can become completely free from a fear, at the same time I'm also completely free from the need to prove that I'm free. Both sides of the coin disappear at the same time.

[ecky788]

Great but that kind of courage doesn't seem human ;D