On Courage and Uncertainty

When I was a kid, our family vacation meant packing up the car and heading to the Alabama coast. We weren't staying in beachfront resorts or eating at expensive restaurants. We were an ordinary middle class family doing what ordinary middle class families did, and to me it felt like the height of luxury.

There was one place I looked forward to every year. The Wild Woody.

If you've never seen it, imagine a three story go-kart track built almost entirely out of lumber. Every plank creaked. Every kart rattled. Every turn echoed through the whole structure. It was gloriously, obnoxiously loud. The track wound upward in a giant spiral until you reached the top. Then came the part I dreaded.

The drop.

As a kid, it looked almost vertical. From that height, it felt less like a racetrack and more like driving off the edge of the world. I was too young to drive, so I rode with my dad.

He loved it. He'd throw the kart into the corners, pass slower drivers, and make every lap feel like the Daytona 500. In my mind, he was Dale Earnhardt, and I was Dale Jr. hanging on for dear life. But every time we reached the top of that spiral, I'd start pleading.

"Dad... slow down."

"I'm scared."

"I don't want to do it."

Being the loving, compassionate father that he was...

He floored it. Every. Single. Time.

We would launch over that crest at full speed. I'd squeeze my eyes shut so hard I thought they might never open again. My hands gripped the side of the kart until my knuckles turned white. My stomach climbed into my throat, and for a few terrifying seconds, I was convinced we were going airborne.

Then it was over.

I'd catch my breath and we'd do it three more times because, as Dad would say, "We paid for the whole race, we're doing the whole race." Looking back now, I realize he wasn't trying to scare me. He was teaching me. He was teaching me that fear isn't a stop sign.

He never mocked me for being afraid. He never told me I was weak. He simply refused to let fear make the decision.

That lesson has followed me my entire life.

When I started my landscaping business, I took on jobs I wasn't always sure I was ready for. I figured them out anyway. When it came to relationships, I learned that risking rejection was better than wondering "what if" for the rest of my life. Today, that same lesson is carrying me into another chapter. I'm walking away from businesses I built with my own hands to begin law school and pursue a completely different future. It's exciting. It's uncertain. It's more than a little frightening.

In other words, it's another trip to the top of the Wild Woody. The funny thing about fear is that most of us spend our lives waiting for it to disappear before we act. We convince ourselves we'll start the business when we feel ready, ask the girl out when we're more confident, change careers when the uncertainty fades, or pursue the dream once we're convinced we can't fail. The problem is that day never comes. Fear doesn't disappear simply because we wish it would.

We don't become comfortable by waiting for fear to leave us. We become comfortable through repeated exposure to difficult things. Every challenge we face teaches us something the last one couldn't. Every uncomfortable conversation, every setback, every leap into the unknown makes the next one just a little less intimidating.

Think about Navy SEAL training. It is one of, if not the, most demanding military training programs on the planet. Yet every year, ordinary men complete it and emerge as some of the most capable warfighters in the world. What they're doing isn't magical. It isn't a divine gift. It isn't nepotism, extraordinary genetics, or blind luck. If you lined up a graduating BUD/S class, you would find men from different races, religions, ethnicities, heights, weights, and economic backgrounds. In almost every conceivable way they are all different.

What they share is not the absence of fear. It's their relationship with it.

The teams have a phrase for this: "embrace the suck." It isn't a celebration of misery. It's an acknowledgment that hardship is inevitable, and fighting against that reality only makes it worse. The cold water never gets warmer. The logs never get lighter. The miles never become shorter. The men simply become more capable because they have repeatedly exposed themselves to difficult things until difficulty no longer controls them.

Life isn't much different.

The first business is terrifying. The first major failure feels devastating. The first time you risk rejection, it feels personal. The first courtroom argument I'll ever make will probably tie my stomach in knots. But the obstacle itself doesn't change. We do. Confidence is rarely something we possess before we act. More often than not, it's something we earn because we acted anyway.

Even Christ was led into the wilderness to be tempted. If the Son of God was not exempt from trial, why should we expect to be? Every one of us will face moments that test our resolve and make us question whether we're capable of what's in front of us. The answer isn't to wait until fear disappears. The answer is to become the kind of person who can carry fear without allowing it to dictate the direction of your life.

People often say you should find peace in chaos. I'm not sure that's quite right.

Chaos doesn't usually hand you peace. It demands something first. Maybe the better lesson is this: Embrace the chaos, then become the peace.

Calm isn't something you stumble across. It's something you create through courage, discipline, and the willingness to keep moving forward even when your instincts tell you to hit the brakes.

My dad never gave me a lecture about courage, he just kept his foot on the gas. And somewhere between the top of that wooden track and the bottom of that terrifying drop, he taught me one of the most valuable lessons I'll ever learn.

Sometimes the only way through fear, is head first and full throttle.