Lesson 23 - Fear? Or You?

Last night I went on a date with my wife.  We do stuff like that because we love each other and we are awesome and don't suck.

Completely unrelated, I have issues with arrogance and vanity.

On this evening of happy joy time, we went and watched "Cirque: Shanghai - Warrior", a "Chinese" acrobatic circus.  (I say "Chinese" because I don't know that every one of them were actually Chinese.)  It wasn't "Cirque de Sole" amazing, but it was still pretty good.  They started off with really simple stuff and just progressively cranked up the difficulty until they were performing feats of insanity that only people who are high or crazy (or both) would even consider.  

There were high balancing people pyramids, high tossing and flipping, tumbling, balancing, juggling, and often all of it at once.

The last three main routines started with the hanging ribbons, where someone (a duo in this case) wraps silk ribbons around their arms or legs and then is lifted off the ground where they swing around in lazy circles while performing stunts, in the air, hanging from ribbons which are not actually attached to them but are only being held on to, generally one person at a time while the second person is holding on to nothing but the first person.

And of course there are no nets.  For anything.  Ever.

At one point the girl is hanging by nothing but her neck from the guy who is hanging on to the ribbons with one arm.  Then she is laying horizontal on his toes  in a "planking" position while he is holding on to the ribbons.  Then she wraps the ribbons around her thighs, does the splits, hangs upside down, grabs him, and they float off.  The ribbons are not tied.  Simply wrapped around a couple times.

Then there are the twin cage hoops that rotate around a central pivot with a dude in each cage hoop.  A cage with no sides.  Sometimes they are in the cage, others they are on the cage, on the outside, 30 feet in the air, no ropes, no nets, while the entire apparatus rotates on a central access, one cage on each end, in giant, fast, circles.  The guys jump into and out of the cages all in transit.  They get on top, and as the cages crest the top arc, fly into the air as the centrifugal forces launch them into the air and then they land back down again as both them and the cage come back down in their arc.

And then, they do it while juggling.  Then they do it while jumping rope.  Once the guy got his foot caught in the rope.  He stumbled and bobbled and almost fell off, but kept his footing, and then tried it again.  Nerves of steal doesn't even begin to describe what it would take to not only try it, but to almost die, then try it again with barely a pause.

Then there was the spherical cage where not one, but four motorcycles drove inside of and then drove around in it and upside down in different patterns without running into each other. One mistake, and everyone has a very bad trip to the surgical ward.  But they didn't even hesitate.  They were confident and focused.

As I sat in the audience and watched these and other things, I reflected back on my gymnastics days.  I was never half as good as any of these people.  But there were some of the things they did, basic things, I used to do.  The handstands, the pyramids, bits of tumbling and flipping... I remember doing those things.

But I remembered the other side of it.  I remember why I was never as good as any of the people I watched last night.

As I thought about it, I realized the problem wasn't one of skill.  Please don't misunderstand.  I'm not saying I was that good.  I'm saying it wasn't  skill or the potential to be that skillful that held me back.

It was fear.

I remember doing handstands on the ground.  Pretty easy once you practice, gain some strength, and make it almost second nature.  No problem.  Then, you start doing handstands on other people.

This sounds hard.  It really isn't.  If you have a good strong person under you, (they are called a "base"), they do a lot of the work for you.  You simply need to stay tight and straight and use proper control to get upside down.

It's pretty simple.  If you can do a proper handstand on the ground, you can do one on a good "base".  I've done it and I've taught it, and I've done both sides of it.

Here is where the problem comes.

You do it on one person and it's no big deal.  But now add a second level.  Now you are three people in the air.  From a structural stand point, if you do it right, it's still pretty stable.  But suddenly you are way off the ground and you are upside down staring at it.

I've seen people do it 6 or 7 people high.  I never made past just the one.  Not because I couldn't do the handstand, but because I was scared to death.

Adding one more person didn't make my part of it much harder.  Yes, it is harder for the people under me, but for the guy on top, it's still fairly simple.  There is some extra motion to balance out, but I found I could stabilize lots of motion when I was down low, but up high...?  I would freak out and bail every time.

We used to train doing handstands by having someone try to push you around while you were on your hands.  Not super hard, because it's pretty easy to shove someone over that way.  But we would try to simulate a shaky footing.  I was pretty good that way.

But the moment altitude was involved, I totally would lose it.  I was afraid.  My fear defeated me before my skill showed my brain that I could do it.

As I thought about this, it wasn't hard to see how this is true in most areas of life.  People will "fail" more out of fear, than out of ability.  We don't walk a certain path because we don't think we can.  We don't make certain choices because we've rationalized away the decision.  But in most of those cases, if we are honest, we made those choices out of fear of what might be, instead of what IS.

People are very capable.  With focus, and training, we can do almost anything.  We are rarely limited by ability.  What limits us is our fear.  Fear of failure, fear of damage, fear of pain and hurt.  And, while the dangers might be real, so is our ability to overcome the danger.  We have the ability to over come the fear.  We have the ability to realize that fear is simply an illusion.  It's not "truth".  Real, but not true.

Don't let fear keep you from something greater, from realizing the height of your potential.  You are not your fear.  Don't let fear define you.  

Let you define you.

Be more.