You don’t know your limits until you’ve exceeded them. I’ve learned that as an entrepreneur who flirted with bankruptcy, as a blogger sharing my very personal revelations that some in my family find embarrassing, as a middlescent masquerading as an adolescent with my crude sexual jokes, and as a friend who’s willing to “go there” in my deep conversations with good friends. Heck, a year ago, I was launching a book while being on GMA and The Today Show soon to be opening our Santa Fe campus just as I was finishing 36 sessions of radiation and two years of hormone depletion therapy.
If I wanted to be safe, I would have never left my crib.
Rilke’s quote reminds me that it’s fine to be on the losing side of an election if you feel passionately about your cause. It’s okay to lose a court battle if you’re pursuing justice. It’s painful but beautiful to pursue someone you love who just isn’t available to you…yet.
It’s nice to feel safe, but the other meaning of a safe is a bulletproof cabinet with a complex lock that no one but you can open. Maybe it’s time you came out of your protected, predictable safe and tested yourself. What if 2025 was the year you expanded your boundaries a bit? Found something big enough to be defeated by and, defiantly, came back to conquer it the same year?
Scared to do it? That’s a good sign. You don’t have to do it alone. There’s a whole movement of MEA alums in 60 regional chapters around the world who are spreading their wings just like you. They and we are here to support you.
-Chip