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Fear's Antidote

December 17, 2003

Becky asked me two weeks ago, "How did you get the courage to leave your position as an attorney and go out on your own? How did you know what you wanted to do?"

Me, courageous? Bill Clinton, celibate? 

Because questions like Becky's are asked of me so often, I'm going to quote from the answer I gave her:

"I left the world of the normal, monolithic, full-time, full-on career on December 31, 1993. It took no courage. It would have taken courage had I tried to do it several years earlier - but I was gutless, so I didn't do it then. (In hindsight, it's fortunate that I didn't, because I wasn't truly ready.)

"By 1993, I had evolved, though a decade of exploring, to the point where the courageous decision would have been to stay, knowing that this choice would see me shrivel up. I didn't know what I wanted to do. But I had come to know myself well enough to have some trust - trust that things would unfold in an OK way, trust that I had enough wit to find a niche in which I could make a life. The dangerous option now was to stay; the safe option was to go. Safe because by going I could begin to breathe again, open out, nourish my soul.

"My trust proved to be justified. By leaving my career, I let space into my life - space that allowed good things (that I wouldn't have dared hope for) to unfold. Gradually my work portfolio took shape. 

"One of the morals of this story is that 'ripeness is all.' There comes a time when people become ready to take the leap. It's when they try to force the pace that they keep running up against barriers."

In short, fear is a normal incident of career change. But there exists an effective antidote: exploring. I've just put on my web-site an article called "From Career Angst to Bliss: An Explorer's Tale." It describes my own exploring in a little more detail. Read it at http://www.johnclarkonline.com/about/explorer.asp.

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