Lean In

by Mel Robbins

One little choice can change your life.

Seth’s life was a mess. After marrying a woman he didn’t love, he was divorced before he was 30. He’d lost half his friends and half his money. He hated the guy he’d become, and he felt like he was going nowhere. Without a clue as to how to tackle the huge problems that tormented him, he decided he would begin to change his screwed-up life by coping with a single problem.

Seth had always been afraid of heights. Sitting on a barstool practically gave him vertigo. So he resolved to break out of that fear by doing something he never thought he could. He decided to go skydiving. That’s how he found himself wearing a blue jumpsuit, sitting on the floor of a little plane that sounded like it was powered by a rubber band. This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had. I can’t do this. I should just go home, he thought. If he hadn’t been strapped to the instructor, he would have called it quits.

When the doors slid open and it was time to act, Seth froze. “The $275 is for the ride up. The ride down is free,” the instructor said. “If you are going to do this, now is the time.”

Seth didn’t feel like jumping. He was scared to death. But with the wind whipping all around him, he wondered, What would I be going home to? The only things waiting for him at home were Chinese takeout and a job he didn’t want to go to on Monday morning. Did he really want to be that guy anymore? The guy who let fear and regret rule his life?

So he closed his eyes, adjusted his goggles, eased to the edge of the open plane door and shifted his weight. He didn’t leap from the plane like an action hero. He just leaned in to the open sky—to the chance that something might shift in his life—and let gravity do the rest. And with that tiny action, he stopped being the guy who was too scared to handle a risk, who never did anything interesting, who let his failures define him. He became someone else, someone whose life wasn’t over but was just beginning.

Leaning in to that open sky gave Seth a wild ride and one hell of a stomachache. But that choice to lean in, that small shift in weight and change in direction, changed his life forever because it put him in motion. That is what leaning in is all about: taking the small action that will let your momentum take over and carry you forward.

You think you have to figure it all out before you take a step. Instead, lean in. Send that email. Pick up the phone. Sign up for that class. Commit and do it. What matters is that you push through your feelings and start moving. Take action and lean toward what you want without regard for how it will look or turn out.

You don’t need to take a massive leap. All you need to do is lean in and see what happens next. Make that tiny push, and then let gravity pull you through.