Erica Baier teaches all of us a lesson on fear, after an unexpected diagnosis turned her life upside down.
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00:00If you had 20 seconds left to live, what would you do?
00:05I stepped outside to take the phone call
00:07I had been expecting.
00:10Hey, Dr. Dean, this is Erica.
00:11I'm really, really sorry that I missed your call.
00:14Hey, we got your results back from your biopsy.
00:18We ended up finding some abnormal cells,
00:20so we decided to put it through a couple more tests.
00:24And, Erica, you have Hodgkin's lymphoma,
00:31which is a form of cancer.
00:36Cancer?
00:42I did not hear the rest of that phone call.
00:47First thing my mind immediately thought was,
00:49how could this even happen?
00:52Now, what happens if I lose my hair?
00:54People are gonna think I'm weak and incapable of doing this.
00:58What happens if I don't even have much time to live?
01:04And over the next couple of days,
01:06we spent a lot of time Googling
01:08practically everything under the sun
01:11about Hodgkin's lymphoma, chemotherapy.
01:14Those weeks, gosh, I tried so hard
01:18to not let anybody know how scared I actually was,
01:23because I had read a lot of articles,
01:26and there's a 90% success rate
01:28with treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma,
01:30but for some reason, I kept thinking about that other 10%,
01:36and I was scared out of my mind
01:37that that was going to end up being me.
01:41And as I was sitting there thinking about that,
01:44I ended up putting myself into a certain scenario,
01:47and I'd invite you all to join in this scenario with me.
01:51If you had 20 seconds left to live, what would you do?
02:0410.
02:0610.
02:0710.
02:0810.
02:0810.
02:0910.
02:1010.
02:1110.
02:1210.
02:1310.
02:1310.
02:1410.
02:1510.
02:1610.
02:17And just like that, time is up.
02:25What were you thinking?
02:29Who did you think about?
02:33In 20 seconds, we were able to identify the things
02:36that we've probably been too scared to do before now.
02:40I think a lot of us know in this room
02:42that our time is limited,
02:43but for some reason, we choose not to take that to heart,
02:48me included.
02:50And because we don't take that to heart,
02:53we end up letting fear stop us in our tracks.
02:59But as I was sitting in that doctor's office
03:01for the first time in my life,
03:04it occurred to me that my time actually might be limited.
03:09I hit one of the lowest points in my life
03:12that I've ever been.
03:13I was scared of what everybody was gonna think of my story.
03:16I was scared of what life is gonna be like
03:18after all of this ends.
03:20Gosh, the list goes on.
03:22What fear do you need to choose to fight today?
03:26And if you're that person in the crowd today saying,
03:29Erica, I'm not really scared of anything.
03:33My life's actually going pretty good right now.
03:36Then it's time to show up for somebody who is scared.
03:39I decided I was done letting fear control my life.
03:44The real enemy is not our situation.
03:48The real enemy wasn't the cancer.
03:49The real enemy wasn't the doctors.
03:51No, the real enemy here is fear.
03:55And we have to stop fearing the fight
03:57and start fighting the fear.
04:00I gave myself 20 seconds to get up off that floor
04:04and do something more with my life
04:06than just be scared all the time.
04:09Ladies and gentlemen,
04:11tonight is our night to stop letting fear
04:14control our lives.
04:16In fact, let's throw 20 seconds up on the screen right now.
04:21Right now is our turning point to leave fear behind.
04:27It takes 20 seconds to take that first step,
04:30to make that choice, to reach out to somebody,
04:33to start that conversation, to write down that dream.
04:36Our time is ticking.
04:37We have the opportunity to say no to fear.
04:40We need to stop believing the lies
04:43that fear has continued to feed you
04:44and start believing that you were made for a moment
04:47such as this.
04:48We stop fearing the fight and we start fighting the fear.