Balancing act

According to an article I read awhile back, undertaking a new venture needs to have a healthy balance of excitement and anxiety. These two emotions serve as a check and balance to motivate us yet provide a necessary degree of caution. When the balance is right, life changes can take place. It's not a guarantee of success mind you, but it spurs us on and, when necessary, to accept disappointment for what it is, a learning experience, a bump in the road.

True failure only occurs when these emotions are out of balance. When excitement rules, we are often careless or ill prepared. Success - however, we measure it - can be short lived. When anxiety weighs down the scale, we usually remain stuck in place. The trying never begins.

So how do we keep the balance?

JRB

Survival 101

Our shoreline is cursed with rip currents (sometimes called riptides or undertow). Roughly, for those who don't know, rip currents are caused when waves are prevented from returning to the ocean by something such as a sandbar. The current moves along the obstruction until if finds a spot where it can break through. The water is literally ripped out to sea. They are strong and dangerous to swimmers, who are often blindsided. The good news is that they don't go on for ever, either in time or distance. So if caught up in one, how do we survive these too often deadly phenomena?

• Relax - don't struggle, you'll only wear yourself out
• Don't try to swim back to shore while you're caught in the current, you'll only wear yourself out
• Swim with the current, parallel to the shore, the average rip current is about 30 ft. Once you're out of the rip current, head for shore
• If swimming parallel is too difficult, then go with the flow, it will take you out into calmer water, from where you can signal someone on the shore for help and also find it easier to follow the previous step (or rather, stroke)

When you think about it, this is also good advice for life in general. Let's face it, most of us at some point have been or will be blindsided by a personal rip current, which brings with it a real fear of emotional if not actual drowning. So when it happens, remember the rules of survival:

Relax...go with the flow...ask for help.

Food for thought

Fear and I have been periodically acquainted over the years. In fact, we're probably better acquainted that I care to admit. Fear is one of those bad-ass people that you know you shouldn't hang with but are just not that easy to give up. You know the kind, gives you really bad advice and encourages you to eat all the wrong food that simply feeds your insecurities but sure tastes good. So how do we cut these ties that bind?

I found this article on Care2 helpful.