This month’s theme is “Risk: Stories of taking a chance.” It took me a long time in life to be ok with taking chances. I’m embarrassed to say that my fear of failure was greater than my desire for success. In fact, that sentence was so uncomfortable for me to write I just went back and changed it from present tense to past tense. So even now, after lots of practice taking risks, I still worry about how shaky my faith is that things will work out.

I don’t know where I first decided that any mistake was the end of the world but I know I lived with that belief for a long time. I felt anything could be taken away from me at any time and I was always a half-step away from something terrible happening. For decades I lived with the fear that I was going to lose my job, my home, my health, my kid, and just about anything else I cared about. You can imagine what I was like to live with. I could have been the Tony Robbins of demotivational speaking. Have you read my book, “It’s Never Going to Happen” or taken my 12-week course, “Bury Your Dreams: How to Stay Shackled in Life and Love”? What about my Amazon best-seller, “The Seven Habits of Highly Delusional People” or my children’s guide to life, “The Power of Not Now, Maybe Later: How to Just Kind of Survive Until You Die.” Of course not, because I didn’t write them. Writing them would imply hope and I am nothing if not true to my delusions.

Thankfully, I’m starting to move away from those beliefs. Or maybe I should say I’m recovering from those beliefs. I’m not going to go into any stories here about the chances I’ve taken over the last few years. I’ll save those for another time. But I am interested in hearing stories about risks you’ve taken. What did you do and how did it work out? Or maybe you didn’t take a risk once and you wish you had. How did that affect your life since?

Bring a true 8-minute-or-less story about taking a risk to our next show on August 24. We’d love to hear it. I’d love to hear it. I’ve been hunkered down for the past couple of months not risking too much, trying hard not to dream too much, just working on restoring my energy and faith enough to where I can start asking myself “what if” again. I haven’t asked around but I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who’d like to hear a story about how you found the gumption to take a chance one time. Extra credit if you can work in the word gumption 🙂

Remember to keep it clean and practice your story out loud as much as possible. Here are the rules & guidelines to help you get started.

https://freshgroundstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/storytelling-rules-and-guidelines/

I hope to see you on August 24 at 7pm at Roy Street Coffee and Tea.

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com