If You Can’t Beat Fear, Do It Scared
By Alexa Loebel
Change.
It’s inevitable. It’s what happens to every single one of us, at one point or another. It’s something that we all experience, at one point or another.
We strive for greatness. We doubt. We fear. We love. We learn. We fail. We succeed.
We change.
When you take a glance at where you are today compared to where you were five years ago, what’s different? What event(s) took place that brought such drastic changes into your life — for the good, the bad, and everything in between?
For some, it’s a career. For others, it’s love. For most, it’s loss.
The significant changes that impact our lives, don’t necessarily come from a specific experience in itself. It comes from how we react.
Who you are today might not be who you were five years ago. Who you are today might not be who you’ll be five years from now.
Change; it’s a blessing in disguise.
I am one of many who has experienced the most change and growth in my life through loss and heartbreak. When I write about each, I try to be sensitive to the emotions and experiences that others are going through, because I have 100% been there. When I write about each, I am eager to share my words through my own experiences, for those who are unable to comprehend where they go from theirs.
But this time, I’m going to share something different from what you’re used to reading, and what I’m used to writing. Something I haven’t shared with the world until now.
The way that I know how to go about expressing my own emotions, opinions, and words of advice is uplifting, honest, and encouraging. This time, it’s a bit different. This time, it’s real and raw.
When I think about the times where I suffer the most loss and greatest heartbreak — although I go through your standard, typical, normal grieving process just as everyone else in this world, there is one thing that stands out above anything else.
I retaliate.
Everything that I was or am told that I couldn’t, shouldn’t, won’t, or can’t do — I do. Everything that was or is ignored and didn’t/doesn’t matter — I make matter. Everything that was or is pushed to the back burner by someone else — I bring to the forefront of my life.
That’s not how my life was before, but it is now. And I love it that way.
Change.
It forces me to be uncomfortable. It forces me to take risks. It forces me to take action. It forces me to love being afraid.
I’ve somehow managed to find a passion for literally and figuratively staring my biggest fears in the face and accepting their challenges, head on. I stopped fitting into this mold in someone else’s life. Instead, I started creating a new one — one for myself. One I could be proud of because it wasn’t his, or theirs. It was mine.
It’s the way I know how to live my life. That’s not how my life was before, but it is now.
And I love it that way.
I retaliate.
Tell me no? I show you, yes. Say I can’t? I prove I can. Want to scare me? Alright, I double dare you. Shut me down — I get back up again, and then some.
My way of living my best life has been to essentially do everything that, at one point or another, I was told wasn’t possible. My journey through self-discovery has been realizing that everything is possible — everything.