Facing Fear: Step Out in Faith and Rise Above What’s Holding You Back

CHAPTER 14 A RELIABLE PROCESS YOU CAN EASILY REPEAT

WHEN I TOOK THE WIRE IN MASAYA, I BECAME AWARE of something I’d not expected. More than the heat, more than the gases, more than the length of the walk or the cameras or the wind, I was aware of how totally at peace I was. Even after such a long and crazy and frustrating day, when I took that first step out over the cauldron, I wasn’t at war with anything. I was completely at peace. And that was only true because I finally knew how to face my fear and overcome it.

As I neared the walk’s end, I could see my wife and amazing children there waiting for me. I could see my father too. But one person whose presence had special meaning for me was Lijana. In 2017 she nearly died with me on the wire, then she fought fears and came back in Times Square and encouraged me to keep moving, stretching my limits.

After years of working so hard to identify, name, talk to, and move past my fears, I realized at Masaya that I had developed and embraced a reliable process I could easily repeat whenever fear stuck out its ugly face. Walking across that wire gave me a greater sense of God’s purpose and plan for my life, because I knew I had the tools necessary to prevent me from running scared and to embrace a deeper belief that my purpose is bigger than my fears or doubts.

I wish I could better describe it to you, but it was as if I could feel God answering all of those prayers I’d prayed and sung over myself—even when I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. There were so many things happening as I crossed that wire, bringing me full circle, redeeming yet another piece of my family’s legacy by reminding me that God is always faithful, and that he is always in control. If this book is about nothing else, it’s about remembering that truth above all others.

I opened this book with a story of a fall that no one expected, of a group of seasoned, trained professional aerialists tumbling through the air, helpless against the moment and gravity. It wasn’t just some random story; it was my story, and I’ve done my best to share with you each step of my journey and help you get inside my quest. If you’ve read this far, though, you’ve discovered that this is more than my story.

This is your story too.

MAKE THE STORY YOUR OWN

You live out some part of this story every day, because facing and overcoming fear is a natural part of what it means to be human. The physical dimensions and demands of my story may not be at play in your life, but you’ve likely recognized yourself once or twice in this book. Together we’ve discovered some of the most common truths about facing and overcoming fear, but having that knowledge isn’t enough—we must act on what we know if we want to defeat fear.

If you’re going to make this story your story, then I want to remind you of the five big ideas that will help you truly take this material to heart.

1. We All Fall

I opened with the fall in Sarasota because all fear begins with an inciting incident. It may be a traumatic loss of life, a financial upheaval, or an unexpected medical diagnosis, but there is always something that triggers our fears and gives them power.

2. We All Fall Again

If our issues with fear stopped after the initial incident, things would be a lot easier. But fear doesn’t come once and leave us for good; it comes in waves. Sometimes it’s what we realize about the world after a loss—that we don’t have control, no matter how much we try—that sends us deeper into the fear trap. For a long time I believed that if I prepared enough, I would always be in control of my fate on the wire, and maybe you’ve had similar ideas. Work hard enough, be good enough, serve often enough, be generous enough, and the world would yield to you. But only God is in control, and while we rest in that and can enjoy a personal relationship with him through his Son, Jesus, being close to God does not put us in control. It merely puts us next to the one who is. So we fall, and we fall again, not because God isn’t in control but because we still believe we are (or want to be).

3. The Answer Is Growth

I hesitate to use the word answer here because we’ve been trained by our culture that an answer is essentially a one-time thing, a vaccination or special pill you take once to make all of your problems go away. Most answers don’t work that way—if they did, engineers and builders would never say, “Measure twice, cut once.” Sometimes, the answer for now isn’t the answer for next week. But I’m choosing this word because of the other one it’s paired with: growth.

When you are making an effort to grow every day—to get even 1 percent better than you were yesterday—then growth really is the answer to fear. Fear seeks to make you feel small. It seeks to keep you stuck in patterns, habits, and systems that don’t serve you well or allow you to live with full freedom and joy. As long as fear feels bigger than you, there’s a high probability it can win. But when you make an effort to grow daily—to read your Bible, change a habit, push yourself harder at work, be more attentive as a spouse or parent—you begin to get bigger on the inside. You begin to develop new confidence, new skills, new ways of seeing yourself and the world. Suddenly those same old fears aren’t as big as they used to be because you’re so much bigger by comparison.

Growth will push you to try new things, to fail at some things, and to keep looking for everything you need to become a better person. My growth journey was very individualized; yours might include more people. My journey happened very quickly; yours might take several years. But no matter how different our growth journeys may be, waking up every day and taking the next step in front of us is something we all must do in order to overcome fear.

4. You Must Develop Good Habits

I’ve been up front with you about my habits throughout this book, the little things I do that help me stay focused and disciplined. I’ve told you about my worship playlists that I develop as I’m practicing for a walk and how those songs effectively become prayers over me and the performance, giving me words to connect with God that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to find. I’ve shared some insights into my training regimen, how I start the wire low and loose, or practice in simulated violent weather conditions. These aren’t personality quirks; they’re the lived-out expressions of what I believe. They are the physical examples of my mental foundation, or if you’d like a simpler term, they are my habits for self-discipline.

If you’re going to grow and use that growth to overcome fear, you have to develop habits that can sustain you on the journey. Maybe you need an exercise routine, a better diet, a personal time for reflection, or regular visits with an experienced counselor. If you’re not sure how to go about developing better habits, then start with the habits you have now and evaluate which ones work for you and which ones work against you. If the habit is helpful, ask yourself if there’s some way it can be improved to serve you even more. If the habit is unhelpful, then ask if you’re willing to give it up.

Evaluating habits can be challenging because we often design routines that are meant to keep us comfortable—and it takes a strong mind to willingly interrupt that comfort in order to build toward growth.

5. Step Out in Faith . . . Again

I’m most excited to revisit this idea, because it’s the one, above all others, that keeps me focused. I wrote in chapter 11 about the need to focus on the future, sharing with you briefly how my dream has always been to come back to the circus and help it grow into the future.

Once upon a time, our culture saw the circus as magical; it was a place of fantastic sights and sounds and experiences that you couldn’t find anywhere else. If you’ve ever taken a child to a circus, you know that magic still exists for the child—the colors, the spectacles, the endless joy of being part of a world unlike anything in real life. But the challenge for the circus business over the last fifty years has been how to keep the interest of those between the ages of twelve and twenty-four. How do you keep the circus cool for that demographic? Buried in that challenge is the opportunity to build something that lasts—and I have been fixated on it my whole life. Call me a little overconfident, but I’ve got ideas here that I believe in my soul will absolutely work.

Believe it or not, this is one of the things that went through my mind as I walked over Masaya. Where do you go after walking a live volcano? What trick could be bigger, more amazing, more awe-inspiring? Could it be starting my own circus?

For some, circus is a negative term that signifies chaos and disorder and phoniness. We call people clowns when we want to minimize them, or we call crumbling businesses or failing governments a three-ring circus as a way of highlighting their dysfunction. What some people think of when they say circus has been reduced to anything other than magical. What would it take to reset their understanding of a circus? How amazing would it be to reintroduce them to the magic and wonder of the world where I grew up?

The truth is, a circus is one of the most organized, efficient, amazing places on earth. People don’t appreciate how hard it is to make something so organized look disorganized! Having grown up in that world, I would happily challenge anyone to find an industry that can move nine hundred people from one location to another and build a literal city overnight. That’s what the circus can do—and did do—for decades: it moved a massive collection of performers, workers, animals, tents, and equipment across miles of darkened road or railroad track, only to set up an astounding community twenty-four hours later. It was accomplished through genuine community, through people living and working together to take care of everyone’s best interests. The circus thrived when that sense of community—that sense of family—was at its core because people will work tirelessly for those they love.

When I started my career, I was committed to a life in the circus. It was what I grew up knowing; it’s what my family did for generations before me, and truthfully, under the big top is one of my favorite places to be. I looked at it the way a seventh-generation farmer or a fourth-generation basketball coach might look at life spent pursuing those careers. But over time, I realized that in order to enjoy life working under a tent later in my career, I needed to step away from that life for a bit and challenge myself to dream so big that I might one day help reinvent our business. If I was going to live a life that gave me the greatest opportunity to share the blessings God has given me, I was going to have to choose a different path. And so I did. My dream has grown and changed over the years, and there have been setbacks and breakdowns along the way, but in everything, I know I’ve done my best to move closer to the person I want to become and set my path to do exactly what I mentioned earlier: to one day help reshape opinions about my industry.

So launching my own circus is my next step of faith because there’s fear in this dream—real and present fear. There’s the economic fear that I could lose everything I have worked to build. I’ve worked so hard to build this nest egg, and it could all go away if I sink it into a circus. That fear speaks loudly, and it speaks with a hint of truth—I could lose everything. But that could happen no matter what I invest in; I could invest in a laundromat or a restaurant (and I’ve considered both of those ideas!) or buy shares in some of the most successful companies in the marketplace, and there’s a chance I could still lose big. But that’s the nature of investment—it requires risk to produce a return. I could choose not to invest at all, but just keeping my money in my account doesn’t help me; it just builds up and it goes away, builds up and goes away. Without a dream to work for, it simply sits.

Yes, there’s risk associated with launching my own circus, and yes, there’s fear, but there’s also the joy of fulfilling my lifelong dream. There’s the feeling of having my own show filled with the people and life that I love, being watched and appreciated by thousands of people who have come to understand and reclaim the magic of the circus. My fears would cause me to miss out on all of that, and I can’t let that happen. I have to keep pushing toward my dream—I have to keep pushing toward my own circus.

After Times Square, when I was thinking about my next step, my next big move, I was kicking ideas around with my family. I knew what my next big walk would be—walking over Masaya—but Erendira pulled me aside and brought up starting a circus again.

“I think now is the time,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“The kids are close to graduating, and your name is established. We can pull this together and finally bring our dream to life. And besides,” she said, “we’re not getting any younger. This is it.”

She was right. While we prepared for Masaya and what was my most dangerous televised walk ever, I also started planning to face my most dangerous business decision too. I began contacting manufacturers and financers and started working on what exactly it would take for me to get my show out of my head and into the real world. I began taking these small next steps of faith because they are what keep me growing, keep me learning, keep me ahead of my fears.

Three days after I came home from Masaya, I hopped on a plane to San Diego and met with a circus tent manufacturer. After spending the day together talking about design and production and other technical aspects, we shook hands and I walked away the owner of a brand-new, honest-to-goodness circus big top that will soon find its home in Sarasota, Florida. It’s going to take some time and some careful planning, but eventually Nik Wallenda’s Zirkus will open to the public with a reimagined view of what the circus can and should be in the modern world. And if you’re wondering about the spelling, that’s a little nod to my great-grandfather, Karl, a bright German man who saw possibility and purpose in the circus industry—a vision and a gift he has passed along to me.

My friends, you can face your fears and overcome them. You are not broken beyond repair, nor is there a night so dark that the light of hope cannot find you. If you’ll hold to the reliable process in this chapter and the teachings within this book, you no longer have to be a slave to fear. If, however, your fears still feel far too big for you handle, then may I encourage you with one more thing?

No matter your fears, no matter how big they seem or how powerful they feel, there is a Father God who loves you more than you know, and he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to die in your place, to pay the penalty for your sins. For all who believe in the name of Jesus, the Bible says that he will live within us, and when Jesus lives in us, we no longer have “the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7 KJV).

This is God’s free gift to you. I encourage you to take it.

It is nothing short of amazing.