"Do one thing everyday that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt

I tried my first acupuncture session last week.  Western medicine can't seem to figure out why my body is acting the way it's acting so I'm trying alternatives.  Besides having an elementary-school-girl crush on my doctor, I like it.  I can't really feel any immediate miracles, but I like the philosophy of treating the entire body, not just fixing the symptoms.  I think Americans can learn something from this philosophy since we seem to be in the business of throwing money at the symptoms and hoping the problem will fix itself in the long run. 

I tried hypnotherapy this week as well.  A friend of mine has a practice and I decided I had put off supporting her business long enough.  I told my boyfriend, "It was awesome and you're probably going to say it's all in my head."  Many of my friends and family seem to think I'm a hypochondriac and my problems are psycho-sematic.  Well, if I am than hypnotherapy was created for me.  "Because it IS all in your head," I told him.  It was an interesting and positive experience that will hopefully help me start writing again and end the horrible nightmares I've been living with for ten years.  Some say we only use 10% of our brain potential.  If you're skeptical of this statistic try looking at it from another angle, what if we have 90% of brain potential TO use?  What could you accomplish then?  I'm not sure where that myth/fact comes from, but I think the average person is capable of so much more than they realize. If it takes hypnosis to reach my potential I'm willing to try.

Why am I doing all of this?  Why not.  Somewhere on the road to adulthood I am afraid I lost the fearless spirit of my youth.  Isn't this the sad truth in life?  Instead of jumping in my car for spontaneous road trips, I curl up on the couch to watch a movie with the man I love.  Some nights this seems like a fair trade-off, other times I want to grab that man and take him on a road trip to anywhere.  I used to live by the quote "Do one thing everyday that scares you."  Stepping outside my comfort zone was the only way to grow.  I still believe that, but now I find my comfort zone, well, comforting.  At what point do we trade the care free days of our youth in to worry about careers, and loans and all the things we swore we'd never worry about?  Was it a day?  A moment in time?  Can it be stopped if we traveled through time and tell a younger version of ourselves not to fall for it?  We all swear we will be the one to stay young forever and then it passes through us like a gentle, fall breeze and we become mature enough to know better.  Maybe it's my health problems, maybe it's the relationship I'm in, maybe it's the fact that I have been stable for more than six months. I don't know why but lately I feel like I gave up the exciting freedom of my youth and I'm not sure for what?  I suppose I'm happy and this seems to be the natural progression of life.  It's in my nature to fight - even if it's myself I'm fighting.  The weird part is I am happy.  A different kind of happy, but happy. 

But, happy or not, I'm challenging myself to do something that scares me everyday!  Tomorrow I'll stand in front of Marines and teach a class about writing and even though this is the third class and I spent three hours preparing my class it still scares the hell out of me!