Strike One

Babe Ruth once said "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way." 



Great advice to hear.  Hard for some to swallow. 

I often look back and think, "Where might I be if I rethought every decision I've made that was motivated by fear?"  Then I look around and wonder how many decisions I'm still making that are motivated by a lack of self-confidence, fear, doubt or simply because some new and interesting things fall outside of that powerful invisible circle around me called the Comfort Zone.  That zone has amassed quite a collection over the years, like a big lint ball; boyfriends, jobs, clothes, hairstyles, habits.  I could have an Olympic logo of categories!

                                                   Some days I feel like I'm swinging at shoes too. 

These are shots from the City of Hope Celebrity Hope Softball Tournament at Greer Stadium in Nashville.  

                                                        Jake Owen, giving it his all.

                                                                   

Now here's a man willing to try something different.  Dierks Bently playing first base with a hockey stick.

Earlier this week while tweeting, I came across two different articles in the space of 3 minutes that addressed how fear fabricates our lives, affecting our choices of career, or lack of, the friends we choose, where we go, what aspirations we have.  That counterfeit feeling creeps up and envelopes us at every turn. Want to go jet skiing?  Oh, never done that?  Well, pack up your dishes and dolls and go home.  How about trying one of those trendy BYOB painting classes?  Afraid you'll manifest a matchstick man?  Sorry, can't play with you.  Lately I've been contemplating the theory that "Thoughts Become Things".  I suppose for a bit, I thought that was a load of New Age psycho babble, but the longer I've considered this, really THOUGHT about the whole idea of manifesting things by a power unseen, the more truth I can attribute to that very simple statement. I can see a lot of broad strokes that reflect this across my life.  I don't know why this seems like such a stretch.  I'm a woman of faith.  I believe in God.  I BELIEVE God.  This blog didn't exist a week ago.  I've considered starting a blog for over a year but didn't do it, for a myriad of self-doubting excuses. It won't be any good, there are enough people out there doing this, who will read it?  Well, the blogosphere is full of happily typing people who don't think twice about stuff like that. Now, I'm a photo-blogger.  Try saying that like photographer.


I had a  friend of mine recently tell me she didn't think she could do what she'd always wanted to do, modeling for print ads,  because she's a mom now and over 30.  This is a strikingly beautiful woman on many levels.  She maintains that her window of opportunity to create something interesting with her life has narrowed.  I told her she hadn't even gotten started yet!  Conversly, another friend of mine is a father to 10 grown children, a few dozen grand and great grand children, and just made it to Mount Everest's base camp last year.  So age notwithstanding, it really depends on you - if you make the choice to check out of your own life early and observe what's left with a wistful curiousity, or grab your gear and see where the path beckons.

Author Grant Von Harrison writes, "To a great extent, we accomplish what we think about.  Your thoughts, more than anything else, will be the determining factor in what you accomplish during your life."   So, let's distill it to the essence - If you think you CAN'T, your RIGHT!  If you think you CAN, you're RIGHT!  I'll ask my kids who they think they are and they'll tell me without hesitation, "I'm an artist!", "I'm a dancer!".  They think it, they do it, they say it and it is so.  It's that simple.  Think it. Say it. Do it, and make it so.    Enjoy the rush of something new.

Jake Owen's shoe on the pitcher's mound.  Sometimes you just gotta change the game.