Stand

"Your playing small does not serve the world." 

Ouch

When did I decide to live in fear of being big?

When did I decide that being humble means cowering?

No.

Not anymore.

I will face fear.

Have victory over it.

Watch it stumble with fatigue before it can reach out its crooked hand and grab me. 

Feel it fall behind.

Know it tires as I run faster to believe in myself. 

Hear it gasping, starving for something to keep it alive.

Today I decide to face something even more powerful than fear.

Strength.

To look for it deep within me. 

Ask when I can't grasp it. 

I am strong. 

I choose to believe in myself.

I choose to succeed.

I choose to stand.

I choose to believe the truth.

Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Man in the Arena by Theodore Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."