{"id":17629,"date":"2017-03-01T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/?p=17629"},"modified":"2025-07-09T11:29:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T18:29:30","slug":"things-youre-afraid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/blog\/things-youre-afraid\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Do Things You\u2019re Afraid Of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"a<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI must not fear. <\/span><\/em>
Fear is the mind-killer. <\/span><\/em>
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. <\/span><\/em>
I will face my fear. <\/span><\/em>
I will permit it to pass over me and through me. <\/span><\/em>
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. <\/span><\/em>
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. <\/span><\/em>
Only I will remain.\u201d <\/span><\/em>
<\/span>Frank Herbert<\/span><\/a>, \u201c<\/span>Dune<\/span><\/a>\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much gets in the way of the \u201cI\u201d that remains after you\u2019ve done something that truly, deeply scares you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t grapple with actual-factual fear very often, there\u2019s a chance that you\u2019ve lost the knack for it. We all used to be little badasses, after all; in youth, we tackled the scary stuff head-on all the time. We stood up on the weird stilts attached to the bottoms of our torsos and figured out how to use them to get to mom, crouched several feet away with an encouraging look on her face. We showed up to the first day of school. We sat next to the grumpy old guy from the DMV and parallel-parked. We went for the kiss. We earned bar after bar; stripe after stripe in the war against No-You-Can\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was hard. Fighting that war is tough, tiring stuff. So when we got to adulthood and could build a little fortress to hide from fear, we damn well did it. Right? You control the variables. You rest.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resting ain\u2019t good for you. Not for long.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A lot of people, when they frame up the idea of skydiving, bubble up with a nervous laugh and talk about how \u201cthey could never do that.\u201d When you press a little to see what they\u2019re afraid of, they\u2019ll usually tell you that they\u2019re afraid of dying…but in a world where <\/span>making a skydive is a heck of a lot less risky than driving to work in the morning<\/span><\/a>, that statement doesn\u2019t really hold up.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dig deeper. \u201cFear is the mind-killer,\u201d after all, and this is a spiritual problem that leans on the intellectual side. <\/span>Why<\/span><\/i> are you afraid? Keep tapping away at the question, and you start to get it out of your system: you\u2019re afraid of unfulfilled potential; you\u2019re afraid of trashing your reputation if people find out about it and think you\u2019re reckless; you\u2019re afraid you won\u2019t be able to get yourself to leave the plane. You\u2019re not afraid of death. You\u2019re afraid of failure.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might spoil the surprise, but here it is: You\u2019re not going to fail. If you get on that plane, you\u2019re going to, unequivocally, <\/span>win<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Skydiving is such a powerful tool for personal development that we meet therapists all the time who would love to <\/span>prescribe<\/span><\/i> it. Tandem skydiving, after all, mixes two elements that almost nothing else on the planet does: it\u2019s <\/span>scary<\/span><\/i>, but it\u2019s also\u2013<\/span>from the statistical point of view<\/span><\/a>\u2014very safe. Making a skydive reaps all the benefits of pushing practically pretty much every fear button in your body without the much-more-significant danger presented by other activities.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing things you\u2019re afraid of–like skydiving–will pull you from that comfortable rut you\u2019ve built for yourself and inspire you to keep moving. You\u2019ll start making plans to do other things that leave you vulnerable but present a reward for their risk. Over time and repetition, your comfort zone will grow. It won\u2019t be long before you\u2019re regularly doing things you never thought yourself capable of doing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, to go back to the original question: <\/span>Why should you do things you\u2019re afraid of<\/strong>?<\/span><\/i> Well: When you \u201cturn your inner eye to see its path,\u201d as Frank Herbert sagely notes, you\u2019ll see that the path your fear leaves behind leads straight to your best self.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Book Now<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":25420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[122,75,72],"class_list":["post-17629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-skydiving","tag-fear-of-skydiving","tag-first-time-skydiving","tag-is-skydiving-scary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17629"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31038,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629\/revisions\/31038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}