Transformative Moments

Halloween is coming up soon and with it the focus is on being scared. Being scared in a freaky Halloween way is fun, but being truly afraid is not. True fear is a bad thing that tends to hold us back and it can manifest itself it in a lot of different forms. For me, I’ve noticed that most of the time when I’m afraid, it’s because I’m worried about the outcome of something and therefore have self-doubt. I guess doubting yourself is normal at times, but it’s a choice that is never good and almost always impossible to overcome.

However, I recently read a story about the ingenious founder of GoDaddy.com that really helped to put self-doubt in the right perspective. Before Bob Parsons became a successful businessman, he was a Marine rifleman in Vietnam. The day he arrived in a combat zone - as a green replacement in a squad that had just lost five men in an ambush - he confronted the likelihood that he would not make it out alive. He sat down on the wall of the old French fort his unit occupied and “had what I believe was the only anxiety attack of my life,” he recalls. He finally overcame his terror by resolving to do the best job he could and be satisfied with it regardless of the outcome. It was a transformative moment that helped him to develop the discipline and courage needed to succeed as a businessman. “If you can accept the worst that can happen to you and live with it,” he says, “you become like a superman or superwoman, meaning you can do anything because your mind doesn’t get in your way.” Self-doubt will hold people back in life, but if you can accept the worst and still commit to doing the best job you can, you’ll find yourself accomplishing more than you’ve ever dreamed.

Looking back on my life I can see there were many times that I was truly scared. Like when I had to give a speech in front of hundreds of people at the Bren Center, or when I quit my job to start my own company, or when I asked my wife if she would marry me, or when I was up to bat in the bottom of the 10^th inning in a championship baseball game, or when I stood up at Church to share my story of faith with the congregation, or when my Dad was dying from cancer and I knew no matter what I would never be able to fill his shoes. When I think back about each one of those scary times, I realize that I often focused on my faith and asked God for his help… and He never once turned me down! I realize now that God believed in me whether I did or not. After reading Bob Parsons story I had a transformative moment myself. Why would I ever choose to doubt myself, when God has never once chosen to doubt me!  

   

It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.

~ General Lewis William Walt, Vietnam War Veteran