I get really comfy inside my comfort zone. I have always been this way. Growing up with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, it’s easy to look back now and see how much I may have missed out on because I was too nervous and scared to try new things.
Now that I have kids, I am hyper-aware of giving them the most and the best of everything this world has to offer. I want them to take it all in. And I guess I’m using this as a chance to do the same. Seeing the whole world for the first time through their eyes.
My initial inclination is to give in to their fears. If they don’t want to do something because they’re scared, my knee jerk reaction is to concede and let them sit back. But I’m really trying to kick that habit, with the help of my husband who is a major “say yes” kind of guy. I’m leaning into my fears and I’m teaching them to do the same.
We just got back from a two week long trip in Israel. Talk about leaning into my fears. I had been dreading the trip ever since my husband mentioned it. Planning it, packing, airports, hotels, foreign countries, new foods, unknown. My panic was humming under the surface for months. Until we got there, and I realized I needed to seize this opportunity and use it to show the kids how big and beautiful the world it.
Here we are in the Dead Sea. It stung like an MF, but I didn’t want them to be scared of going in. So we slathered on that good, good mud and floated our burning butts around the lowest spot on earth. The biggest lesson I’ve learned since having kids is that I have to push myself far outside my comfort zone in order to show them (and, in a round about way, myself) how much they’re truly capable of. And how much there is to SEE and DO on the other side of their comfort zone. They whined and complained, but they did it. And that’s a moment they’ll remember forever, I hope.
This trip was full of little moments like this and I hope they were able to fill their memory banks with lots of lasting souvenirs. What is something scary you’ve done recently to prove to your kids that they CAN.