The Leap of Faith

gbucknell
Dec 30, 2025
6 min read

The Leap of Faith When the Paycheck Disappears

I didn’t see it coming.

One day I was working—plans in motion, routines intact, bills scheduled, the quiet comfort of “next week looks the same as this week.” The next day I found myself out of work with no notice. No runway. No neat handover. Just a sudden, blunt question hanging in the air:

Where does the next paycheck come from?

It’s a special kind of fear when the ground shifts under you and you’re not only thinking about yourself. When you’ve got a family to support, the pressure multiplies. It isn’t just “How will I manage?” It becomes “How do I keep everyone safe? How do I keep the lights on? How do I keep food in the fridge? How do I keep my head together so I don’t spread the panic?”

That fear doesn’t always arrive like a scream. Sometimes it arrives like a spreadsheet. A mental tally. Rent or mortgage. Fuel. Groceries. School costs. Insurance. The small subscriptions you never noticed until suddenly you notice everything.

And then comes the deeper thing underneath it all:

What if I’m not enough?

What if I don’t recover?

What if this is the start of a slide I can’t stop?

When life hits like that, you don’t just lose income. You lose certainty. You lose the sense of being in control of the story.

The Moment Before the Step

There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that’s stuck with me for years. Indiana stands at the edge of a vast chasm. On the far side is what he needs—what he’s pursuing, what he believes matters. But between him and the goal is empty space.

No bridge. No clear path. Just an instruction: take the leap of faith.

It’s one thing to hear words like “trust yourself” when the sun is shining and the bank balance is healthy. It’s another thing entirely when you’re staring into the unknown and you can feel your chest tighten.

Because the truth is, when you’re out of work with no notice, it can feel exactly like that scene.

You look out over the drop and your mind starts doing what minds do:

“This is irresponsible.”
“What if I step and nothing is there?”
“People are depending on me.”
“Maybe I should wait until I know for sure.”

But waiting doesn’t always give you certainty. Sometimes waiting just gives fear more time to build a nest in your head.

The Fear Isn’t the Enemy—It’s a Signal

Fear isn’t proof that you’re failing. Fear is often proof that you care. It shows up when something matters: your family, your identity, your responsibilities, your pride in being someone who provides.

But fear has a trick: it tries to convince you that safety comes from knowing the whole map before you take a step.

Real life rarely works that way.

Sometimes the next move doesn’t arrive as a perfect plan. It arrives as a decision: I will move forward anyway.

The Bridge Appears After You Step

In that Indiana Jones moment, the bridge isn’t visible until he commits. Only after he steps does the path reveal itself. That’s the part that matters.

Because life often asks the same thing of us:

to apply for roles we feel underqualified for,
to make calls we’d rather avoid,
to reach out to people we haven’t spoken to in years,
to pitch our services,
to try something new,
to be seen starting again.

And yes—there is risk. There’s always risk. But there’s also something else that wakes up when you step forward: resourcefulness.

When you stop waiting for certainty, you start creating momentum. And momentum changes the game. It doesn’t erase fear, but it stops fear from being the driver.

The Decision That Changed Everything

Here’s what I didn’t understand at first: the leap of faith wasn’t just about surviving the gap between paychecks.

It was about choosing what kind of life I was going to live from that point on.

Because in the moment I finally decided to take a step forward—regardless of what the outcome might be—something bigger than “finding another job” was born.

Everyday Bushcraft was born.

Not as a tidy business plan. Not as a perfect strategy. But as a decision: I was done letting fear, and other people’s dysfunction, dictate my future. I was done staying in environments where the culture rewarded ego, politics, and predatory behaviour—where you’re expected to swim with corporate sharks and pretend the blood in the water is “just business.”

At some point the realisation landed with absolute clarity:

They couldn’t get me anymore—because I decided to get out of their bloody pool.

And the second I chose that, everything changed.

I wasn’t just trying to replace income. I was choosing my legacy. I was backing myself. I was saying, “I’m not building someone else’s empire at the cost of my peace, my family, and my spirit.”

That’s what belief looks like in real life: not a motivational quote, but a line in the sand.

Belief Is Not Blindness. It’s Courage With Uncertainty.

A leap of faith isn’t pretending everything is fine. It’s not positive-thinking your way out of reality. It’s not denying the bills or ignoring the pressure.

It’s saying:

“I don’t have all the answers yet…

…but I believe in my ability to find them.”

That’s a different kind of faith. It isn’t faith that the world will magically fix itself. It’s faith that you can adapt. That you can learn. That you can ask for help. That you can take a hit and still keep moving.

When I finally looked at my situation and stopped running the same fearful loop, I realised something:

I didn’t need to see the whole bridge.

I needed to take the next step.

Not the next ten. Not the next year. Just the next step.

What the Leap Actually Looks Like

In movies, the leap is dramatic. In real life, it’s usually quiet.

It looks like:

rewriting your resume when you don’t feel like it,
making a list of contacts and swallowing your pride,
sending the message you’ve been avoiding,
applying even though you’re not sure you’ll get a reply,
saying “yes” to an opportunity that isn’t perfect but opens a door,
choosing not to catastrophise,
going for a walk to clear your head so you can think like yourself again.

It looks like building a little structure around chaos. Like turning panic into process.

And when you do that, something shifts. You stop being someone life is happening to, and you start being someone who is responding.

The Gift I Didn’t Expect

I’ll be honest: I didn’t ask for the shock. I didn’t want the stress. I didn’t enjoy the uncertainty.

But I can say this now with conviction:

I will never go back.

Not back to the toxic culture. Not back to the games. Not back to the feeling that your livelihood depends on keeping the wrong people happy.

And here’s the part that still surprises me: every day I’m grateful—not for what they did, but for what it forced me to choose.

In a strange way, those toxic excuses for people handed me a gift they never intended to give: the gift of decision. The gift of clarity. The gift of belief in myself.

They pushed me to the edge of the chasm, and I discovered I could step forward anyway.

If You’re Standing at the Edge Right Now

If you’re reading this and you’re in that place—out of work, uncertain, carrying responsibility—hear this:

You’re not weak for being afraid.

You’re not broken because you’re shaken.

And you’re not finished because something ended suddenly.

You might be standing at the edge of something new, even if it doesn’t look like it yet.

Take the next step you can take.

Then the next.

And keep your eyes forward—not because you have proof it will work out, but because you believe in the person doing the walking.

Sometimes the path appears after you step.

And sometimes that step becomes the moment you realise: