Step Toward Fear

August 10, 2025

Fear has a way of dressing itself up as truth. It whispers in your ear with a voice that sounds like your own, telling you you’re not ready, not good enough, not worthy of the dream you keep tucked in the back of your mind. It convinces you to hesitate, to delay, to shrink, to stay safely inside the boundaries you’ve already drawn for yourself. But here’s the thing: everything you want, every breakthrough, every unexpected opportunity, every recognition, every piece of fulfillment you hope your creative work will bring, is waiting just beyond that fear. Not around it. Not after it fades. But through it.

It’s easy to believe that the fear means something. That it’s a warning, a sign to pause. But in truth, fear is rarely accurate. It’s an old instinct trying to protect you from vulnerability, from exposure, from the risk of failing or being seen before you feel fully “ready.” But if you let it steer you, it will lead you nowhere new. It will only bring you back to where you’ve already been. The creative path demands more than comfort. It demands courage. And courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the willingness to take a step while that fear is still there, still loud, still pulsing in your chest.

When you step toward what you fear, something changes. Not always immediately. Not always cleanly. But something shifts. The illusion begins to dissolve. You realize that the wall you thought was blocking you was never solid, it was made of stories, self-doubt, and assumptions that never truly belonged to you. And once you pass through it, you start to see yourself differently. You gain not just experience, but proof, evidence that you are capable of far more than your fear would have you believe.

Maybe it's showing your work for the first time. Maybe it's raising your prices, submitting to that juried show, asking for the collaboration, or simply declaring out loud that you are an artist. These moments, small or large, are forks in the road. And every time you choose the direction that leans into fear, you’re choosing growth. You’re choosing the version of yourself who is no longer held back by invisible chains. You’re choosing to trust that whatever lives on the other side of discomfort is worth reaching for.

Because it is. That version of you, the one who has grown past this moment, who has taken the risk and expanded into something fuller and more fearless, is closer than you think. But you can’t meet them unless you move. Fear will always be there, lurking at the edge of what matters most. Let that be your signal, not your stop sign. Let it point you toward the places that hold your deepest potential. And when you feel it rising, don’t retreat. Step toward it. That’s where everything begins.