Believe In The Best Version of Yourself

“You can choose to live in a place of fear or you can believe in the best version of yourself.”
–Mac Taylor

I heard this quote today while watching an episode of CSI: NY called “Green Piece.” Even though a friend of mine had told me about this particular scene countless times and paraphrased the quote to me, it struck something new in me, hearing the words exactly like that. In the scene, Detective Mac Taylor is talking to Detective Danny Messer about marriage, and Danny’s fear of failing the woman he loves, but wants so badly to be with. The quote isn’t rooted in that though; the statement on its own can be set in a million different situations.

We all have our fears. Human nature is rooted in being afraid. Some people are afraid of everyday things, like spiders or clowns. (I plead guilty to both.) Sometimes, they’re silly fears, and we wish we didn’t have them. (Pleading guilty to this as well.) In some cases, these fears are much deeper, and much more life-altering. Staying with a boyfriend you know isn’t right for you, because you’ve been together for 5 years and the fear of being alone is just too much to handle. Passing up the job opportunity you desperately want, because you’re comfortable at the job you have now. So, fear takes over us and limits the possibilities we wish we could have in our lives.

There is no cure for being afraid. Sure, I can kill a spider and once it’s dead not have to worry about it anymore. But there will always be another spider to be afraid of. All we can do is face our fears one day, one situation at a time. It’s not always easy and there might even be times when it doesn’t feel worth it. But there will always, in every person’s life, come a time when we need to overcome our fears in order to live up to the potential we all see in ourselves. Like Det. Mac Taylor says, we need to believe the best version of ourselves.

So, Danny and Lindsay got married. I still need my dad to kill the spiders for me, and I refuse to go to the circus. But that’s all okay. The best version of ourselves doesn’t have to mean being fearless, or conquering all our fears every single day. It just means that we have to conquer those life-altering fears one situation, one day at a time. That’s when we become the best people we possibly can be. But we can only become the best person we can be once we believe in ourselves first. So believe in yourself, in the very best possible version of you. There’s nobody else who can believe in the best version of you unless you prove to the world just how awesome you are.