“Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.” – John Wayne
I remember the first time I went to jump off a cliff into a lake. Trees, open dirt, edge of the cliff, air. And then nothing for five seconds. The rush, the adrenaline of jumping made the ice-cold splash into the mountain lake almost bearable for my middle school body. Brr!
It took me several minutes of uncertainty before I decided to take the leap, but I’m glad I did. How many times do we stand at the edge of opportunity and toe the cliff’s edge? How often do we shy away and say, “It’s okay; I’ll just watch.”
We see others make the leap, even hear them shout encouragement, “You can do it! It’s so much fun!” And yet, it’s only when we choose to leap ourselves that we feel the rush and excitement for ourselves.
My own leap came in the fall of 2013 when I started Keynote Content. It didn’t take much to compel me to leap, but I was still uncertain of the results. Now, over a year and a half later, I see that making the leap was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
You may be facing a leap, a chance to jump into a new opportunity. Maybe it’s going back to school when you might be much older than your classmates. Maybe it’s writing your first book. Maybe it’s starting your own business or a nonprofit. Maybe it’s leaping out of a bad relationship, business partnership, a rat race of a job, or a toxic church situation. Maybe it’s asking someone out. Maybe it’s a leap into the complete unknown, but you just know you need to jump in with both feet.
“Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage”
Having the courage to leap into a God-given opportunity is part of what makes us human. God doesn’t create us to be safe and predictable; we’re called to this wild adventure of life and it’s not for the faint of heart.
I love the theme throughout We Bought a Zoo that sometimes all it takes it is twenty seconds of insane courage.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmMFIganRQY]