I'm sure everybody who hasn't been living under a rock, knows about the recent passing of Steve Jobs. The CEO of Apple was a true innovator, great leader, and relentless worker, who brought the world some of the most groundbreaking products ever seen. The impact he left on this planet will be felt for generations and is the stuff of legends. In short, he embodies everything that we strive for at living.life.fearless, and like everyone else I am in awe of the brilliance he was able to achieve in such a short span and will greatly miss the fire he brought to his industry and the rest of the world...
Choice: mankinds' single greatest, and most squandered gift. There is no greater ability a person has in this world than to choose. Millions have died for it, fought over it, and sought after it; this very country was founded in the name of it, and yet, in times where this gift is more available then ever, it seems to go to waste. To those who have it, it's become nothing, and to those who don't have it, it's everything.
The choices you make don't define who you are, but they definitely show a lot about your character. It's strange really, our fears of not having a choice have somehow turned into our fears of having to make a choice...
I started this blog about a month ago now and to be honest it was mainly for a class I had to take. I had no idea what to talk about, all I knew is I didn't want it to be about sports since I talk about that all the time and I didn't want it to be just about me. If I was going to do a blog I wanted it to be one where I could possibly help others and share my own experiences with chasing dreams, since we all do. This is what came out and to say things have gone well would be a gross understatement. Things here have progressed faster than I could have ever imagined and the site keeps expanding every week; the feedback from others has been great, the community has been growing rapidly, and I've connected with a number of great people. With that said we are planning some major updates to the site in the very near future and even bigger ones down the line. The first of these updates will be the creation of a logo to represent the site and everyone involved. I just wanted to throw a quick teaser up of some of the logos we've come up with along with a quick video showing the co-poster Dareece Walker drawing them up...
To be honest I wasn't even planning on writing a post today and my next post definitely wasn't going to be the one I'm about to write. All it took was one comment to change all of that, and it's been nagging at me all week. I think that's what I'm starting to fall in love with about this blog, the community aspect. I love that things that people have said to me have changed the way I view things and have opened my eyes to viewpoints that I never would've known otherwise. This blog is as much yours as it is mine, I'm simply the outlet; take advantage of it. In case you don't know which comment in particular I'm talking about, it came in my previous post where I asked everybody what their greatest fears were. It got the votes I'd expect heights/small spaces, but one comment from someone very close to me, and in all honesty someone I didn't expect a comment to come from, stuck with me the most. That commenter was my older brother, a firefighter in the Air Force, and if you haven't read it then you should take a second and check it out because it really took me back; so much so that I had to let it sit there for a day before I could think of a good response...
For those of you who have been consistent visitors to this site you should have noticed by now that things are looking different around here and are probably thinking WTF!?! Don't panic, my posts will still be coming as they have and I will still continue to bring you the excellent content all of you have come to expect; phew right? Truth is this is the direction that everything has been heading all of along; from the outset of this whole thing I envisioned this evolving into a community of individuals who are chasing their dreams regardless of the obstacles and looking to reach their full potentials by living.life.fearless, and what better way to kick things off then to have four of my brothers become contributing authors. So not only will be getting the same great content as before, but now you'll be getting it with 4x the awesome, free of charge, and as always with no MSG...
I think before I can continue with this trilogy (Frodo not Neo) I need to clarify what makes something a fear. There's a lot of things out there that make people uncomfortable; for example, a lot of people feel uncomfortable doing public speaking but they don't necessarily fear it, they'd prefer not to do it but if push comes to shove they'd be able to get up there and get through it. Now for someone with an absolute fear of it, nothing short of the will of God could make that person do it and if that will does one day come to pass they may just faint, convulse, vomit (true story), really do anything other than look like public speakers. For me, the thought of being average doesn't just make me uncomfortable it down right terrifies me; I'm shaking right now just writing out you know what. The day I feel like I'm living average may just be the day I say goodbye to the world and all my unborn seeds because death would be a reprieve from that life of hell. See the difference? Good, now let's continue...
Alright let's be clear, Action Hank and Black Dynamite didn't change my life per se, but they did give me the insight I needed to write this post, sorry to disappoint. This all started on a lazy Saturday while I was trying to think of some things to write about for my next post; it began with an early morning marathon of Dexter's Laboratory on Boomerang and ended with like my 100th viewing of Black Dynamite (probably my best use of a Saturday yet), and as I was laying there being a productive part of society I began to question how I could write a blog on approaching life with a fearless mentality and addressing people's fears when I, the sites creator, haven't even addressed my own greatest fear. So I started listing out all of my unaddressed fears; snakes, spiders, the baby from Toy Story 3, the thought of them extending the Harry Potter series, etc., etc. All fears yes, but nothing that screams THE greatest. It had to be something that has been with me forever, something that has shaped a lot of my life...
As you can see we've made a couple of visual changes over here to stay in the spirit of the holidays (Halloween duh). You can thank Dáreece for the crazy artwork lol. But this is just a quick post from me; a while back LLF member Paul Supat, who has an awesome blog, sent a link to this video that he thought I'd like, and he was right. I said I was going to work it into a post and I finally did. It was a viral baseball video of a kid doing some incredible hitting, and it got me thinking about all of the awesome viral videos over the years there have been. I think they're a great marketing tool, regardless if they're real or not, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some living.life.fearless videos floating around in the near future...hmm...
The campus is alive, temperatures are lowering, and soon the leaves are going to start changing colors. You know what that means, summer is officially over; and I couldn't be more excited. Don't get me wrong, I love all the cookouts, carefree nights, and days on the beach as much as anyone else (I've have to keep my bronze on); but I'm glad it's over because that means I can finally get back to my one true love in life...BASKETBALL!! Ever since basketball and I started getting serious in high school, I have spent nearly every waking moment either playing it, working out for it, or thinking about it. The game is infectious and I will forever have an unbreakable bond with it. But that doesn't mean that the relationship has been without its strains either...
After writing that last post about leaving lasting impressions it became painfully clear what I needed to talk about next; it's utterly unavoidable and as much as we try to ignore it, it remains the 5 ton elephant in the room. This elephant in question's name is none other than Death. Death surrounds us all, affects us all, and terrifies us all, and rightfully so. Self-preservation is hardwired into each and every one of us and is what makes us cling so dearly to our existences. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, au contraire, we should all prize our lives because it is the most precious commodity we have. I'm just saying that it's time we stop avoiding the 5 ton elephant in the room and face it directly...
Seeing as this site is more about the community and overcoming your own fears along with us, I wanted to get some input from all of you about some of the fears that affect you all. We've already come to the assertion over these past few posts that my greatest fear is of being average. Discovering this really got me interested in others' fears, so I began doing some research over the internet and the most reliable info I was able to find came from Gallup, an organization that studies human behavior and does a lot of research and surveys. One of these particular surveys they took in 2001 on 1,000 participants had to deal with Americans' fears, I've posted the results down below...
I'm definitely a dreamer and my mind is always wandering, thinking about a million different things, so I decided to kick off this new little series called "Just The Tip"; get your minds out of the gutter. They're just quick posts so I can throw out whatever I'm thinking, whatever people are talking about, and just my general random rants without delving all the way in, get it. You'll start to see I think about some pretty random stuff but also pretty interesting stuff (or at least I think so), let's call it my brain vomit. Enjoy. For the first entry I'm going to share something that I have become obsessed with watching online. WINGSUITS!!...
After days spent in deep thought trying to figure out what my greatest fear was, it finally dawned on me that I am more afraid of being average than any other thing in this world. I fear it more than death, more than snakes, more than spiders, more than anything else. I'm sure you're wondering how I came to this conclusion; it was quite easy actually. All I had to do was examine the actions and decisions I've made in my life and a clear trend began to form. As I kid I was naive enough or maybe dumb enough, you decide, to listen to my mom's rants about me being oh so special, one of a kind, and meant for great things and actually believe them in my heart to be true statements (sorry kids all moms lie, you're not special either)...
Now imagine that this world we lived in was the Matrix; I'm Morpheus and you're Neo...got it? Ok, now take out the killer machines, leather suits, and all around badassness of bullet time and what that leaves is one person who has knowledge and experiences to offer (me) and another person who has a choice set before them (you). You could either decide that what I have to offer is of no interest to you and go on living your life (blue pill) or you could give what I have to say a chance and may even begin to see the world in a completely different light (red pill). Now what I have to offer isn't anything physical but instead more of a concept. A concept that most people have unnoticed irrational fears that have limited them from reaching their full potential in both their professional and social lives, and the only way for them to ever achieve their higher potentials is by confronting these fears and learning to overcome them...