Climbing a thousand high boards, we demolish fear, and turn into human beings.

~ Richard Bach

How can you transform your fears into power to propel you to a new life? Fear is energy. When we feel fear, we can also feel its power. Then we have a choice to make: Do we channel that energy to empower or disempower ourselves? The only successful way out of fear is to channel enough empowering energy to go through it. That’s how we “climb a thousand high boards.”

Going through a challenge can actually be easier than backing down. For example, have you ever tried going back down a high board because you were afraid to jump? It’s scarier than jumping off! You’re going backwards off an extremely high board onto the first step of the ladder that feels like it’s halfway to heaven. Swimmers coming up the steps are groaning and yelling at you because they have to retreat. Your hands and feet are so slippery from fear that you think you’re going to slide off the board into infinity.

You finally decide it’s less traumatic to go off the board, even if you kick the bucket in the process. So you jump. You don’t crack your head open on the edge of the board or the side pavement, as you had vividly imagined a zillion times. You don’t wipe out so badly that you have to wear a bathing cap over your face in humiliation the rest of the summer. Sure, you do a belly slap onto the water that rearranges all your vital organs. But you survive. And you can’t wait to go up again.

Today, spend some silent time contemplating one “high board” in your life. What are you most afraid of doing? Maybe it’s making a change in a relationship or situation that is unhealthy.

Delineate in writing the reasons you are fearful and what steps you might take to begin to improve that challenge. Always start with simply spending time in prayer asking for divine direction and courage to make the positive changes necessary for a new life. You don’t have to know all the answers, you just have to give it over to the One who does. You do your part and God will take care of the rest.

Is there someone you should talk with about your situation? Nothing can be healed that stays buried. Is there one phone call for help that you can make? What’s the first small step you can take right now up the ladder of your high dive to start to overcome your fear?

Determine how you can convert that same energy of fear into faith in the specific abilities God gave you to overcome the challenge. The next time you’re afraid, remember what writer Marilyn French discovered: “Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them.”

When transformed into faith, they are also a treasure map to your dreams.

Written by Michele Poydence

~ From I Want a New Life in 30 Days  Publication: Spring 2013

Michele Poydence is an award-winning writer of television and theater, and her film, Anything’s Possible. Her humorous novel, I Want a New Life, is now available on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. She resides in Oakmont, PA.

I Want a New Life on Amazon