“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”

There are two types of fear - rational and irrational. Rational fear exists to protect you, while irrational fear can destroy you if you let it. Irrational fear has a way of tying your hands, holding you back, and anchoring your feet to the ground; only allowing yourself to move forward if you can count on a safety net to catch you.

I have spent a greater part of my life being afraid of things - failure, love, and myself.

I am a perfectionist. If I'm going to do something, it's going to be done well, and if it can't be then I won't do it at all. Sometimes this is an admirable quality and other times it's troublesome because what happens when my best isn't good enough? The truth is that no one should aspire for perfection; it's not achievable because it doesn't exist. Failure is inevitable because it's part of life - it's how you respond to failure that actually matters. Are you going to let it hold you back or  will you embrace it and learn from it? If you want to win you have to learn how to lose first. 

Love is the most challenging thing I've attempted to embrace throughout my life. Love is full of moments that manage to remind you of all your strengths and weaknesses at the same time. However challenging - good love is rewarding; it drowns out fear. But bad love is lonely. 

Deciding to let go of the fear has been the hardest, yet greatest, thing I have ever done. The fear of being myself was replaced by courage to say what I think; what I want. I tend to wear my emotions and thoughts on my sleeves at all times; surrounding myself with people who allow me that leniency is also one of the greatest thing I've done for myself - or rather the greatest thing they've done for me.

Despite all I've learned about fear it still remains, and the worst part of fear is simply knowing that it exists. You see what you want, but you feel what holds you back. But what happens when we stop pulling back? Is falling really that bad? Life is full of moments where you can choose to embrace your fear or let it control you. If you let it control you forever you will lose yourself, but if you embrace it - the options are endless. Maybe fear never actually goes away, but it does lose its power over us when we choose to overcome it. 

Once we embrace our fears we don't need a safety net to fall - we just fall - and land on our feet.