A speaker at a Yes 101 retreat in Grafton, Illinois shares how he swam past a shark-infested drop-off to help his daughter surf. He uses a Pema Chödrön story about confronting a guard dog to argue that facing fear, not fleeing it, is how you move forward. Pick one fear and take one step toward it today.
Good morning, everyone. Here is your Moment of Yes. I'm in Grafton, Illinois this weekend for a retreat, but the Moment of Yes still keeps coming. So for those of you who are in the Yes 101 program, today we are talking and thinking a lot about sort of what are the fears that we have in our life, and we're kind of making a list of those fears. Thinking about fear got me thinking about sort of my own fears, and a few weeks ago I got the opportunity to, to go to the beach with my kids and And my daughter had the chance to borrow a surfboard and to actually try to surf, which she did. But in order to do so, I had to swim with her kind of past a drop-off in the ocean to find a sandbar where she could surf from, where the waves were. Well, in order to do that, I had to swim in the water that was deeper than my head, which for me is a fear because I'm afraid of sharks. And so I had to sort of sit with that fear. And then challenge it. And then because it was for my daughter, I was able to to just take it on and do what I needed to do to support her. And I made some interesting progress with it. It was it was fun to kind of be in that space, notice it, but then to keep swimming. It reminds me of an idea from the author Pema Chödrön, who who shares a story about monks who were moving from monastery to monastery, and along the road it was being guarded. By intimidating guards who had really ferocious guard dogs. While they were walking by, one of the guard dogs broke loose and started running at the monks. Well, the group of monks took off and started running, but one monk, instead of running away from the dog, actually turned around and ran directly at the dog. Ran directly at it, looked it in the face, and the dog stopped and totally disarmed. The fear or the aggressiveness of the dog. And so a friend of mine, SP, got me thinking last night when I shared the story about me swimming in the water. And she said, instead of running at the dog, you were swimming at the shark. Now obviously I wasn't swimming directly at a shark, but metaphorically it works. And so as you go through today, your moment of yes is to think about a fear or two that you have A dog that you need to run at, a shark that you can swim at, anything that you know is holding you back. Are you able to take a step toward, in the direction of that fear today? And just be present with those feelings and be present with, with that fear. But take a step of progress. That is your idea, your moment of yes for today. Have a wonderful day.
