I woke up this morning, filled with all sorts of anxiety, one of them being “What on earth am I gonna blog about today?” I’ve committed to publishing two blog posts a week, The Weekly Tea goes out on Friday and then a special post on Tuesdays. Sometimes I plan the topics months in advance, other times I just write whatever is on my heart that day. Today was the latter.
Like many others, we’ve been using this quarantine as an excuse to rearrange the house fifty-seven times. I usually do this anyways, but now I have a legit excuse so it really is a win win. Anyways, I moved some stuff around so the kids could have their own bookshelf for all of their beloved books. The bright aqua blue shelf just wasn’t doin’ it for me in it’s new location so I decided on a whim to paint it. It’s a gorgeous wicker shelf, screams retro and was given to me by my great uncle so it’s special. I was planning on painting it beige or some type of sand color so it would look more like all the other wicker shelves I see flooding my Insta feed. However, when I went to the store I saw this awesome color called Rustic Orange. If I had the glorious job of picking the names for paint, I would’ve called it Cheeto Orange or Nostalgic Cheeto. I grabbed a couple of cans, checked out and left the store. It wasn’t until I spraying this glorious Donald Trump dust all over my wicker shelf that it hit me, In order to truly flourish, we have to be okay with taking risks.
Beige is safe. Copying what everyone else is doing is easy. Drawing inside the lines is comfort. But blazing orange paint? Daring to break the mold of culture? Coloring way outside of the lines? This is brave living. What is something you do simply because it’s what is expected of you? How would you live differently if you were living your dream life? How would you fashion your days if you weren’t constricted by the fear of what others might think? What would you do to pass the hours of each day if you gave yourself complete permission to be who you wanted to be?
Risk taking is something I love. I live for the thrill of jumping and seeing if the net appears. But if we are going to take risks, we have to be okay with failing. We have to be okay with looking silly. We have to be okay with the fact that Cheeto orange might look tacky (or it might be a total win). So what I want for each of you is to identify your fears. Where are you terrified of failing? What choices are you making in your daily life that are based in fear rather then love? As Osho so wisely put it “Don’t move the way fear makes you move, move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
So your fears, did you identify them? Next, I want you to think of one fear you can smash this week. What negative belief can you speak truth over? And how can you move past that fear into beautiful, freedom? Into Cheeto orange kind of living! I have a beautiful shelf now that reminds me to live a little, to try something new, and to take risks big and small. Maybe it’s as small as a paint color or maybe it’s as big as the city you live in or the next big project you take on. Either way, I encourage you step out of fear and into brave living. I hope you live a little this week.
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