Take more risks

I was a physical daredevil as a kid; I knocked out my two front teeth playing Evel Knievel on my bike (they were baby teeth anyway) but somewhere along the line I lost my adventurous spirit and stopped taking risks of any kind.

I’m thinking about investigating a physical art, a discipline, and the idea scares me. Not just because of my age and the growing fear of getting physically hurt that comes with it, but more because this discipline is the kind that it takes years and years of practice at to become even a skilled beginner. Yet, it appeals to me because the very core of it is balance, the harmonizing use of energy to become more aware of yourself and the world around you. So do I take the risk and look potentially like a big fat idiot in front of people with more skill than I? Do I trust the “propoganda” of the dicipline that says that nurturing beginners is one of its core values? Or do I stay in my shell and convince myself without even trying that it’s really not for me.

How to over come this fear of looking foolish I do not know but it is, I think for me, the key to taking more risks.

Is something “risky enough” is a dangerous question to ask simply because it measures risk by someone else’s standards and not your own.

For me this has always been the biggest impediment to taking risks: what seems risky to me is often considered “no big deal” by others whereas the types of risks they take are things that I wouldn’t dream of doing.

OK…so I haven’t really been “taking more risks” beyond embracing the idea that things might keep going right…and then things started to go wrong. Nothing major: I got stomach flu, but since eating has been such a huge issue for me for the last year having it be even a minor issue again is constricting beyond all measure.

Now that I’m coming out of this set back, how do I get back to the place where I’m ready to take risks? I don’t know but I do know that I want to and need to do it.

Given the problems I’ve had with digestion for the past year and a half it constantly amazes me when I not only eat but I also 1) enjoy it, and 2) don’t have any ill effects.

This weekend I had wine for the first time since January 2006. Not a lot, not even the whole glass they served me at the restaurant, but enough to make me feel daring and like a grown-up. I missed wine.

One little risk that didn’t back fire and I feel like I could take on the world. Is that wrong? I don’t know but I like the way it feels.

My life is out of balance. Because of things that happened to me when I was very young, things that were out of my control, I have not taken enough risks in my life. I have feared for a while that it is too late.

I’ve come to realize recently that it is only too late if I do nothing with this knowledge, if I continue to live my life the way I have been: safe, not making waves, not asking for what I want, not taking risks because (historically) risks have not turned out well.

Life is an experiment. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; sometimes it rains. Without the experimenting part there is no point.