Who would you be without that fear?
Reading time: 30 seconds
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? What would you do today? This week? This month? This year? What conversations would you have (or not have)? What actions would you take (or not take)? What's stopping you—outside of a fear story? Who would you be without that fear story?
Here's the thing about fear: it means well. It's here to keep us safe. To protect us. It's natural, normal, and human to feel fear (particularly if there’s faced or unfaced past pain and/or trauma). If you are out there taking risks, chasing dreams, being creative, and trying to live your best life, you are likely going to feel more fear than others. The more we push past our comfort zone, the more fear will rise. It’s how the design works.
The trick is to know bone-deep that the sense of security fear sells is false advertising. Fear wants us to believe that we will find what we are looking for by shrinking from life, tightening around experiences and clinging to the familiarity of our current beliefs, life situations, and narratives. But, you may have noticed, even if we do everything fear tells us to do, we still don’t achieve what it promises. Even if we abide by all of fear’s warnings, we may continue to find ourselves worried about what’s around the corner, comparing ourselves to others, and doing whatever we can to distract ourselves from the void that never seems to fill. Why? Because as long as WE are there to listen, fear won’t stop telling scary campfire stories about an imaginary future that hasn’t happened yet! And 90-100% of the time never will. It's a giant feedback loop that accomplishes nothing outside of keeping old stories, old suffering, in place.
I'm glad fear there to remind me to look both ways when crossing a street in London so I don’t get nailed by a double decker. But the more we look at the conditioning that creates fear—and muster the courage to ignore it and take action anyway—the more we see that most fear is illusory. An old story stuck in the past. And us along with it.
So let me ask you again: what would you do if you weren't afraid? And who would you be without that fear story?
Onward!
KB
