Slay Your Dragons, But Which Ones?
My youngest son has a summer job he doesn’t want. It looks good on his resume, pays well for a seventeen year old, and is in an office with girls. But it’s not what he wants.
The other day as he was skipping breakfast and on his way out the door, my wife Anna called out, “Slay your dragons today!” I loved that. Awesome advice for any of us on the way out the door to a destination we don’t really want to arrive at but know is an important part of our journey.
Summer Jobs Can Teach Prioritization
My son wants to be a musician. To him, his summer job is unrelated to his journey. Anna and I see his job as an important part of getting where he wants to be. A lot of work is doing what you don’t want to do but know needs to be done. Even our passions have their dull and unpleasant side.
Slaying your dragons doesn’t always mean having the courage to do what you love. Sometimes it means having the courage to do what you don’t want to do, but know needs to be done. Dragons are imaginary, but they still take courage to overcome. Less than 1% of all the things I worry about have happened, yet the fear is just as real as if I’d stepped into dragon slobber.
Facing Our Fears
Survey of common fears: Chapman University Survey of American Fears
In a survey conducted in the spring of 2016 of over 1,500 adults from across the US, the most common fear was corrupt government officials, with over 60% of respondents saying they were afraid or very afraid of them. Only about 19% of respondents were afraid or very afraid of death. 80% of fears listed on the survey are things we can’t control.
Why bother being afraid of something we can’t control (others talking behind your back - 7%), or something that probably won’t happen (economic collapse - 38%)? Becoming unemployed (25%) is a rational fear. Dying isn’t. It makes sense to spend more time working to keep a job or than trying not to die.
St. George killed a dragon that was causing a plague and was going to eat the king’s daughter. Thor killed a giant sea serpent that was wrapped around the world. My dragons are things like being rejected or embarrassed, failing or not being good enough. They’re more like chameleons than dragons.
Dragon Prioritization
So what dragons should we slay, and in what order? I say the dragons that we can do something about and that we have have a reasonable chance of encountering. Fear is great if it motivates us to take rational action. It’s bad if it paralyses us or makes us irrational. Maybe to slay our dragons we need to get to know them. We can live with fear and use fear to motivate us to do what’s right, even if the right thing is boring.
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