Have you become pinned beneath the boulder of your own reputation?

This is not an original thought but then if you read BIG MAGIC by Elizabeth Gilbert you will realize that two or more of us can in fact have the same thought/discovery what scientists call multiple discovery – a term used whenever two or more scientists in different parts of the world come up with the same idea at the same time.

When I read that description about being pinned beneath the boulder of your reputation it felt like it had come from the bowels of my own existence.

The pain is not my own pain. My own pain is different.

This pain is the pain I feel when I see wasted gifts, strewn carelessly along life’s path because we are stuck at the top – at the pinnacle of our success…feeling as if we can’t recreate what has brought us this far and so we allow fear to consume us.

Many times those who were magnificent in the field of sales, are now leading other sales professionals. But we no longer sell. We are afraid of not swinging it out of the park as we once did.

We all feel that when we’re at the top, the only way we can go is down and so we build a moat around us and stop learning, doing, trying, experimenting…for fear that if we do – we will be exposed as a “one hit wonder”.

Gilbert says of Harper Lee

I wonder if perhaps she had become pinned beneath the boulder of her own reputation. Maybe it all got too heavy, too freighted with responsibility and her artistry died of fear – or worse self-competition.

Sometimes we just get pinned down. We’re neither at the top nor bottom of our game but we are pinned down by that boulder of fear.

I’ve taken Liz Gilbert’s suggestion to accept that fear is always going to be along for the ride, but I will NOT let fear drive.

I’m also accepting that life will always change. It is neither consistently good or bad. There is so much that I don’t control. There is so much that I don’t have to explain.

I am haunted by this…

You could leave life right now…” said Marcus Aurelius “…Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Lessons keep repeating themselves…I can’t seem to shake certain feelings…yet time marches on.

It’s time to get from under that rock. Don’t be burdened by your past successes. With humility press forward knowing that you control only those actions you take.

I’m asking myself this:

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?

How long are you going to wait?