Comfort Zone Crushers: How I Almost Let Fear Win

Through my association with Fitfluental, I am incredibly excited to be part of a sponsored campaign in Under Armour's What's Beautiful competition. I was provided Under Armour gear to participate in the competition. All opinions are my own and I am under no obligation to give them a positive review. If I hated it, I'd tell you.

I have a small confession to make.

I wrote a post on Wednesday about my involvement in Under Armour's What's Beautiful competition through Fitfluential. My confession is that when I originally opened the email from Fitfluential about what would be expected of me as a sponsored blogger, my heart sank and my head started to spin. I was initially overcome with dread. Is this what I signed up for when I applied? I didn't recall that my participation with this campaign would involve me entering a public contest, declaring an epic goal, recruiting teams, and possibly recording a video? What? I can't do this!

My initial thought was to back out. It was a thought driven by fear. What if I look stupid? What if no one joins my teams? (How the heck am I going to get people to join my team?) What if I look fat in my pictures? I am terrible at making videos. What if I fail? This isn't me. Nope, not gonna do it.

But ultimately, it came down to the fact that I really value my association with Fitfluential. It is a great community of like-minded bloggers, it provides tremendous opportunities, knowledge, support, and friendships. I knew if I backed out, it would reflect poorly on me and could possibly hinder my future relationship. That is something I am not willing to risk. I made a commitment to Fitfluential and I became determined to follow through.

 

Suck it up buttercup...I'm doing this!

But you know what happened? I started out by visiting the What's Beautiful site and creating a profile. Then I declared a pretty awesome goal that I wouldn't have made if it wasn't for the competition. I even recorded a Vlog declaring my goal, and while still a bit awkward, I realized that I was already getting a little better in front of the camera (i.e. it did not take me three days of retakes to film 3 minutes of unedited video). I was starting to feel really good about this.

That night as I was completing challenges on the site, interacting with other athletes, and joining some teams, I realized...wait a minute...this is really fun! I was loving this competition! What's Beautiful is like a social media site for motivated people all working towards their goals together. I was incredibly inspired as I read through the other athlete's profiles. I had become more motivated than I had been in months! I had new inspiration, a new awesome (scary) goal, and the pure excitement to fuel my first blog post about it.

This is one of the best things I have done in a long long time...and I nearly let fear keep me from it, because I was uncomfortable with the idea at first.

That is when I decided to name my team Comfort Zone Crushers, because it turns out that this What's Beautiful campaign is an absolute perfect fit for me, my blog, my goals, and maybe for you too, my friends and readers. I just had to take a tiny step outside of my comfort zone in order to see it.

At the Rock 'n Roll San Antonio Half Marathon 2012

What's Beautiful? It is beautiful to break through your own self-imposed limitations, one at time. Will you join my team on What's Beautiful and become a Comfort Zone Crusher too? Let's do this together.

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Keep Running,

Lea

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photo credit: Property#1 via photopin cc