Isn't it funny how a number can be so intimidating?

Before my 300th post, I didn't really think a lot about how many blogs I'd written. Now, everyday I see the number and feel intimidated. Where will the 308th come from? What if I don't have a 309th?

Trusting in the process. Giving into fear to find my courage to continue.

This is my 308th blog. Not a remarkable number. Not a momentuous one even. Yet, the number this morning caused a ripple of fear to slither through my mind.

Fear is the opportunity to be courageous.

Fear is also the opportunity to run and hide. To take off to anyplace else other than where I'm at. To go underground. To indulge in self-sabotage.

I must stay awakened to my fear. Wide-eyed. Alert.

I must call on my courage to draw me out of fear and into reality. Into truth. Into my own best self.

Fear has tripped me up in the past. It has undermined my action with its desire to put me to sleep, to tumble me into inactivity. To blind me to my truth shining within me.

American author, Alyce P. Cornyn wrote, "Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn't happen.”

Last night, while visiting my mother at the hospital, she told me about her troubles sleeping. "I go to bed and command myself to sleep," she said, her crippled fingers clenched into a fist, pounding the bedcovers on which she sat. "I know I shouldn't command myself. But I do. I want to sleep."

We talked about some things she could do to invite sleep to take over her restlessness and she kept replying. "That won't work."

"Do you really want to sleep?" I asked her.

"Yes," she replied. "I would do anything for a good nights sleep."

And then she told me about a recurring dream she'd been having that was disturbing her sleep.

"Perhaps your sleeplessness is fear of the dream reappearing." I commented.

Startled, she sat up. Her eyes widened. "But I can't make it stop when I'm asleep," she said. "It scares me. It makes me unhappy."

"But staying awake isn't making you happier. Why not give into the fear of falling asleep and get some rest?"

On guard against the things I fear most, I lose the opportunity to turn up for myself and tire myself out fighting my fear of the unknown with my resolve to stay stuck in what I know, even when I know it's hurting me. When I let fear drive me away from courage, I give into my worst fears of never being enough.

I cannot be all I am meant to be when I am walking in fear of the world around me and within me.

I cannot step into courage when I am dragging my heals through fear of turning up for me in all my beauty -- warts and all.

The question is: Where does fear keep you stuck in doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?