Recently listening on audio book to Quitter by Jon Acuff and a follower of his blog, Stuff Christians Like, as well as his awesome instagram feed I picked up his latest book START. Punch fear in the face, escape average, do work that matters. Feeling like I was in a creative funk this book was just what I needed to kick my butt back in gear and refocus my time and energy on my goals and dreams.

 Jon hits on a subject that is a topic most of us wrestle with, FEAR. “They are the voices of fear and doubt, and they are governed by a simple truth: they only get loud when you do work that matters. Want to stay on the road to average? Want to rock vanilla right to the grave? Okay, fear and doubt will you leave you alone. However, with the very first step you take on the road to awesome, fear and doubt stir from their slumber…”

He also challenges you, that if you want to be awesome you need to make the time and get up an extra 30 minutes in the morning, even if that is 5:00 am.  “If your dream isn’t worth thirty minutes, you’ve either got the wrong dream or you’re just pretending you have one.”

I walked away from this book feeling challenged to elevate my game in working towards my dreams of being awesome, as a writer and blogger. His words salted with humor and wit, brought a smile to face and stirred me to a new action plan. Speaking of action plans that was is one of the best parts of the book. At the end of the book there is a section called, action always beats intention. For every chapter Jon has questions to work through to get you to begin to apply the actions steps towards being awesome.

If you are tired of sitting in average, ready to take leaps of faith, punch fear in the face, and ready to START but unsure where to begin, pick up Jon’s latest book, START.

“Average is so popular because average is familiar. We all know how to do average…Awesome? It’s a little dangerous. There may be dragons in the woods….Foggy mornings and cloudy nights. Sometimes you are not completely sure about your next step until you take it. Average is predictable. Awesome is adventurous.”