Life's a Rollercoaster-- Love Yourself Enough to Ride It

“Don’t fight it. Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it… Stop hidin.’

Love is a mystery. Let’s get excited.”

Ronan Keating

Rollercoasters evoke a great deal of fear in many people, but then, so does life itself. Fear is humanity’s second greatest enemy and it often works hand-in-hand with humanity’s Public Enemy No. 1: Shame.

Fear and shame are the great cripplers of human life. They paralyze people in their tracks and rob them of their lives. If you’ve spent much of your life being too fearful to stick your neck out into the real world and say “Life’s a fact, so face it” then you know what I’m talking about.

Fear can keep us from climbing aboard a rollercoaster and having the thrill of our day. It can also keep us from stepping out into the real world and having the thrill of our lives. We all know that shit happens. We’ve been hit in the face with it time and again. Some of us wipe the residue of life from our faces and move forward, while others of us flee and hide. Fear is our ever-present shadow. So, we play it safe, refuse to take risks, refuse to heal wounds, refuse to move forward and refuse to truly live. Well, it’s time to stop running and hiding. It’s time to face our fear of life and to take our power back from it by saying “Yeah, shit happens, but it’s not going to stick to me anymore!” It’s time to ride that rollercoaster!

Let’s face it: We’ve only been crippled by fear and shame because we’ve continually allowed others to use them as weapons against us. And we’ve only remained paralyzed by fear and shame because we’ve chosen to believe the lies others told us. No one has forced us to miss-out on life. We’ve  chosen to hide from life by failing to shake the fear and shame from our hearts— and by failing to believe in ourselves.

Start believing in yourself. Climb up on the rollercoaster of life, relax and then brace yourself for the fantastic journey of ups and downs, victories and failures, of the great adventure we call “life.” You just gotta ride it, love the mystery, get excited and stay resilient. Stop fighting life. Simply love it all!