Fear of Flying...

I've finished my book.

My novel.

Finished.

I'll say it again.  I've finished my novel.  Sounds good, doesn't it.  In reality, though, it's terrifying.  Why is that?  I guess it's due fear of rejection.  A fear that it might not be 'good enough'.  Well, balls to that.  I don't care for fear.  Fear is the father of failure yet to succeed at anything, we need to make failure our friend.

We need to sleep with him, eat with him, work with him and carry him around on our backs as we swim, bike and run.  Only by getting to know him can we understand that he can be beaten.  And that he's nothing to be afraid of.

I think that fear of flying isn't fear of flying at all - it's fear of crashing.  Just as vertigo isn't fear of heights - it's the fear that you will somehow throw yourself from them.  So everything has an equal and opposite force or consequence.  And most of us are somehow 'hard-wired' to default to the fear of the opposite force of whatever we're trying to achieve.

Is someone who is fearful of doing an Ironman fearful of the pain it will require or, deep down, are they fearful that they might not finish.  I suspect the latter.

So far, these are merely observations.  What's the answer?  I guess the answer is to look for successes on the journey to whatever your end goal is.  My success is that I've finally written a novel (and a considerably different one to that which I thought I'd one day write).  As for its success in the 'outside world' - I'm relaxed about that.  I've lost sleep too many times before trying to second guess what may or may not be 'hot'.

Oh... hey... I tell you what might be hot though.  My mate Tom has started a podcast.  It's called 'Marathontalk' and it's available from itunes (free of course) or at www.marathontalk.com
Give it a try.  I think you'll like it.

Any other news?   Training is good even though my body is railing against the sudden switch to Ironman (silly) season.  I'm back swimming this week after a five week lay off so my shoulders feel a bit like they've been through the mincer.   I generally post what training I've been doing on my Twitter account (@ironmanj) so you can keep up with it there by following me on Twitter.  I'll get round to posting the training on the blog as I get further into the season but for now it's not really important as it's all about base building.

No photo.

Today it's all about words...