The Cliff Doesn't Care What It's Made Of
Fear is fear, and the same method works anywhere
The first time someone asked me to speak about my coaching on a podcast, I said yes before I could think about it.
Then I spent three days trying to talk myself out of it.
I was a newer coach. I had never done anything like this before. Everything I knew about running and endurance and helping athletes get to start lines had only ever lived inside conversations with clients, and my own experiences as an athlete. I had no idea what would be asked, no idea if what I had to say would land, and no real reason to believe anyone outside my small circle would care.
The cliff felt enormous, and I was terrified. I almost canceled twice.
What finally got me there was that backing out last minute felt worse than showing up.
I did the podcast. The host asked good questions, and I found out it was actually kind of fun to just put my coaching out into the world. The relief afterward was real.
But I remember that feeling clearly. It wasn't specific to podcasts or coaching. It's the same feeling that shows up every time you're standing at the edge of something new.
The Advice Doesn't Change
At some point, someone told you the thing you're afraid of will get easier once you do it.
Maybe it was a coach. Maybe it was a friend who's been running their own business for years and has genuinely forgotten what the first cold email felt like to send. Maybe it was someone who built the life you want and keeps telling you the gap between where you are and where they are is mostly just a decision.
They mean well, and they're not entirely wrong. And they have no idea how useless that information feels when you're standing at the edge of a giant cliff, frozen with fear.
The well-meaning people in your life who've crossed whatever cliff you're facing have lost something important. Not their knowledge, not their experience. They've lost the felt memory of what it's like to stand there without the belief or the evidence that you can survive.
But you listen, and you try to summon whatever they have, and it doesn't transfer. Because it can't. Evidence isn't transferable. It has to be built.
And when you can't summon that same evidence for yourself, the loop starts. You freeze, and then you feel worse about freezing. You file the freeze as evidence about who you are, and your internal story gets louder. The cliff gets bigger in your memory even though it hasn't moved, and you start telling yourself that's just the way it is. And slowly, your willingness to try that thing again quietly disappears.
But that’s the wrong story. The cliff is just the wrong size for where you actually are right now.
What's Actually at Stake
One avoided conversation, one canceled plan, one thing you decided to wait on until you felt ready are all lost opportunities.
But the real cost is what happens if that freeze-and-file-as-failure loop keeps running.
You end up creating a life slowly reprogrammed not to try things. And eventually, not to even want them. The person who used to have a long list of things they wanted to do now has a shorter one, and doesn't entirely remember when they gave up or why.
You don't notice it until you're looking back at something you wanted three years ago and realize you don't want it anymore. And you can't tell if you genuinely grew past it or if you just got tired of standing at the edge of the cliff, too afraid to go for it.
The podcast, the conversation, the thing you keep putting off. None of that is what's actually at stake. The version of yourself that still believes your life is worth trying to build is what's actually at risk here.
The Method Works Here Too
Any runner knows you don't start with a marathon. You build up to it. Shorter distances first, recover, adapt, add distance. You earn it by doing the smaller distances until the marathon becomes the logical next step.
Fear works the same way. Exposure therapy works by building a progression of harder exposures, moving up one level at a time, letting the fear response diminish before adding the next challenge. The brain needs repeated evidence of survival before it stops treating something as a threat. You can't skip to the hardest version and expect it to be easy.
The cliffs in your life outside of fitness work on the same principle of progressive exposure. The difference is that they're usually harder to see clearly.
When I left the game industry and started building a coaching business, I knew I needed to build a public presence, but I had no idea where to start, and anything that felt truly public felt like too much. So I didn't start there. I started with one conversation. Then another. Then, a post online that maybe fifteen people read. Then, a newsletter. Then, writing publicly every week. Then a podcast guest spot. Each one felt like a cliff at the time. Each one made the next one look smaller. I'm still inside this — still finding out what fully putting yourself in new spaces requires — but I can do things now that would have stopped me cold three years ago because of every smaller cliff I took first.
I see the same thing play out with my clients, just on different terrain.
One of my clients was training for her first half marathon and kept losing her long runs to unexpected family obligations. She was used to being available whenever someone needed her, and the idea of telling her family she had a schedule they needed to work around felt genuinely scary. What if they took it the wrong way? What if they felt like she was choosing running over them?
We didn't start with the full conversation. We started with one boundary on one day. Long run days only. She let her family know when she'd be available after. That was her smaller cliff. It was uncomfortable the first time, fine the second, and normal by the third. Once that stopped being scary, she expanded it to her whole week. The family adjusted. The runs happened. She told me later that the running was never the hard part compared to learning that her time was allowed to matter to her.
The Cliff Is Murky In Life
In training, the smaller cliff is usually obvious. Run a 10K before the half. Swim in the pool before open water. Start with bodyweight work before picking up the weights.
In life, the cliffs are sometimes harder to name. Which makes the first step different.
Before you work backward, you have to name what you're actually afraid of. Not the surface version. The specific thing underneath it that's been keeping you stuck at the edge.
My client's surface version was "I don't have time to train." The real cliff was telling the people she loved that her time had value, too. Once she named that, working backward became straightforward. The smallest version wasn't a difficult conversation about boundaries. It was one text on one Saturday morning letting her family know she'd call them back after her run.
Once you name your real cliff, work backward the same way to find a smaller one to start with.
What's the version of this that still has real edge but doesn't require you to already be the person you're trying to become? What makes you a little nervous when you commit to it, but doesn't make you want to walk away and pretend you never thought about it?
That's your cliff. Find it. Do it. Do it again. When it stops being scary, find the next one up.
The Same Permission, Any Cliff
Somewhere right now, you have a cliff you've been standing at. Maybe you know exactly what it is. Maybe you've been calling it something else - not enough time, not the right moment, not ready yet, not the person who does things like this yet. But you know the feeling of the freeze and the walk-away. That quiet decision to try again later that never quite arrives.
You don't need more courage. You don't need to be further along. You need a smaller cliff, and you're allowed to go find one. That's not a consolation prize. That's the actual path.
Everyone who built something worth having started somewhere smaller than where they wanted to be. The evidence you need doesn't exist yet. That's the whole point. You build it by starting, not by waiting until you feel ready.
The cliff you've been afraid of isn't a permanent limit. It's just not your cliff yet.
What's the cliff you keep walking away from, and what would it look like to find a smaller one this week?