How do you feel about holding a tarantula?

And then…I dunno…letting it crawl up and down your arm?

My feelings about it are as follows: NO @#$!%^& WAY!!!

So I’m not quite sure why I celebrated one of my birthdays a few years ago at the Victoria Bug Zoo in Victoria, BC.

It was one of my decade birthdays, and on my decade birthdays I try to do at least one thing I’ve never done before. Over the years I’ve gone whale watching and skydiving, visited China, and done a few other coolio things.

On this birthday, I decided I was going to get over my fear once and for all—and hold a damn tarantula.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

And that’s how I found myself at the Victoria Bug Zoo, staring eyeball to eyeballs with my nemesis: a spider the size of a salad plate.
A small salad plate, to be fair. But still…

Now, at the Bug Zoo, you don’t just jump straight to holding a tarantula. No, you have to warm up first.

• Giant hissing cockroaches.

• Giant millipedes.

• Giant walking sticks.

(Why does everything here have to be Giant?)

Oh, right. The scorpions weren’t giant. They were just…scorpions. Another animal that had never been on my “too cute NOT to hold” wish list.

But you know what? Once they were in my hands and on my arms, none of these creatures seemed particularly creepy!
In fact, it was kind of fun!

So by the time I got to the tarantula, I wasn’t just ready…I was eager.

“There are some tarantulas in here that even we don’t touch,” said the docent (or whatever they call themselves).
“But this one here is basically the golden retriever of tarantulas. He’s harmless and very friendly.”

And he was!
To the point where, after letting him crawl all over me, I didn’t want to give him back!

Sometimes the things you avoid the longest turn out to be the things you end up loving the most.

We build them up in our minds. We tell ourselves stories about how terrifying or impossible they’ll be.

And then, when we finally do the thing, we realize we were never afraid of the thing itself.

We were afraid of what we thought the thing would be.

That’s true for innovation too.

New ideas, new tools, new ways of doing business—they can feel like tarantulas at first.

Big. Hairy. Dangerous. ️

But more often than not, once you actually try them, you realize…

Oh.

This isn’t so scary.

In fact, it’s kind of fun.

So maybe the next time you catch yourself saying, “No @#$!%^& way,” that’s exactly the thing you should explore next.

Because that’s where the breakthroughs are hiding.

So consider this:
Maybe the tarantula isn’t the problem.
Maybe it’s the story you’ve been telling yourself about it.