The #1 word people use when describing their vision, intention or goals to me is this: “SCARY”.


#2 is “BIG” and #3 is “terrifying”.

I’ve definitely detected a fear theme here.

My general rule is that if you have a deep calling to a thing like being drawn to a magnet and it terrifies you a tiny bit, you should definitely be trying to do it.

See, anytime someone mentions fear as they describe a thing they’d like to do in their next season, I’m reminded of what Tara Mohr says when she lays out the traits of a true, deep, soul-level calling.

She says you know when something is truly a calling when, among other things:

1. You aren’t yet who you’ll need to become to fulfill it, and

2. You don’t yet have what you’ll need to have in order to carry it out.

The gap between who you are now and who you’ll need to become to answer your soul’s callings is precisely the part people find scary.

But that gap is also how your callings transform you. 

Catch this principle: Your callings call forth your greatness.

But you can’t become who you need to become to do your callings by:

• sitting in a room thinking about them 
• talking to your friends about them, or
• making plans to do them after you handle whatever the Life Issue of the Day happens to be today, or this week or month or year

You can only become who you need to be to do your callings by doing your callings.

I also like to point out to those who are feeling the urge to retreat on the brink of stepping into their callings that it’s very easy — tempting, even — to confuse fear with awe.

It’s easy to confuse fear with the exhilaration that meets you on the precipice of your expansion. 

It’s even easy to interpret your deep, thrilling excitement at the adventure before you as fear. 

The only way to integrate that excitement is to do what Dave Richo teaches, which is to “pretend you’ll survive” and do the scary thing anyway… to wholeheartedly engage with the subjects of your fear. 

That’s the Spiritual Strategy I use and teach.

As a practical matter, for me that means that when I look at my own vision for my own season, when I see the components and subjects that take my breath away or seem the most daunting, those are the ones I’m already beginning to:

• Explore,
• Learn more about,
• Upgrade my beliefs about,
• Speak into existence and 
• Build skills and team and resources for right now, 

…even for projects I envision being 1, 2 or 3 years out.

Here’s a playful way to do this for yourself: 

Just envision the character you want to become in the next chapter of your life story. 

Just put yourself in the shoes of the author. 

As the author of your own life story, ask yourself: What will this character need in the next chapter?

Ask yourself: What skills, tools, guidance and mentoring will your character need? 

Then: Start resourcing the character you are becoming… now. 

And as you put these resources in place, occasionally consult this poetic roadmap for navigating fear from Khalil Gibran: 

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

Head up + heart out,

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