CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1—Fun Is On the Other Side Of Fear
Chapter 2—What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
Chapter 3—Raising the Energy
Chapter 4—Silencing Self-Doubt
Chapter 5—Unlearning Mistrust
Chapter 6—Timing is Everything
Chapter 7—Don’t Quit Before the Miracle
Chapter 8—Leap of Faith
Chapter 9—Mind Your Eyes, Ears, and Mouth
Chapter 10—People Who Need People
Chapter 11—If You Want to Fly, Prepare to Fall
Chapter 12—Between the Bars
Chapter 13—Go Big, Or Stay Home
Chapter 14—Make a New Mistake
Chapter 15—Visualize the Result You Want
Chapter 16—Rainbow Feelings
Chapter 17—Panic Never Helps the Situation
Chapter 18—Everyone is a Teacher
Final Thought
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.” ~ Coco Chanel
I stand on a narrow platform, twenty-five feet—the height of a two-story building—in the air. Although it’s cold in the gym—a converted metal warehouse that refuses to warm—my palms are sweaty, and I feel beads of cool sweat dampening my face. I look down at a huge safety net running the entire length and width of the trapeze rig. The net seems hundreds of feet below me. Standing high on my toes, I reach out and grasp a trapeze bar, taking deep breaths to steady my nerves, worried I might hyperventilate. The gym is utterly silent while all eyes are on me. It’s my first time flying out of lines, that is, after several months of taking flying trapeze classes at least twice a week, I’m finally ready to swing without the safety lines. Today, for the first time, I’m flying free.
Being a flyer—the freedom, and thrill, and terror of flying—gives me moments of being in the zone, when time slows down to something so slow you can touch it. A flying trapeze trick lasts about eighteen seconds from beginning to end; flyers move at about twenty-five miles per hour. Imagine slowing that down to the point where it feels as if time has stopped. I feel motionless, still in midair, completely free. No worries, no gravity, no limits.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, flying trapeze is not an unusual hobby. Three flying trapeze schools within fifty miles of each other all do brisk business. I was in my early forties when I took up trapeze, an age that is fairly average among trapeze hobbyists. What makes trapeze an odd choice for how I spend my leisure time is not my age, nor lack of acrobatic prowess, nor relatively sluggish reflexes. Trapeze is a strange choice for me because of my fear of heights.
Terror, actually. A fear of heights has made climbing a ladder to change a lightbulb nearly impossible. Driving across a bridge was inconceivable. When attempting to ski as a teenager, the bunny slope may as well have been Mt. Everest. Height was never my friend.
Through trapeze, my fear of heights has been transformed. Fear no longer paralyzes me. Fear no longer scares me.
