Ever…Have You Ever?
So, have you done it?
Stepped away from your comfort zone? Peeked outside that comfy, cozy box?
If you haven’t, no worries. This isn’t a thing to condemn you. I’m writing to say, I understand.
I’ve been embracing living fearlessly. Fearless in the sense that I try not to avoid things of which I’m afraid (people, opportunities, decisions, etc.). As a result of that, these words aren’t just in my notebook. They’re here, and so are you!
The thing is, I don’t always know what I’m afraid of or when. It [Fear] pops up in the darnedest places and at the most surprising times.
Have you heard of the children’s book series titled “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snickets? SPOILER AHEAD – The villain, Count Olaf, is trying to get control of an inheritance left to the three Baudelaire orphans after the death of their parents. In each book Count Olaf stages these farcical schemes wearing elaborate disguises to deceive the different guardians who foster the children. It’s a repeating cycle of the kids resettling, feeling happy and secure in their new situations, then “BOOM!” Count Olaf and his raggedy ass pops up (read while rolling your eyes, it sounds better). That’s how I feel about my fear when I discover it at the root of my… indecision or procrastination
…or hesitancy or uncertainty
…or stubbornness or reluctance
…and pursuit of distractions.
I’ve found fear as the cause for me asking 50 people’s opinions about my decision or choices as if a majority thought on one side or another will change what I believe. Fear is the designer of the loop in my mind that tells me I need to check and double-check, then double-check a second and third time.
Have you ever done that? Has this happened to you? If you have, no worries. This isn’t a thing to condemn you. I’m writing to say, I understand. After all, we just want to be sure. We just want to know it’s all gonna work out. We just want to know that we’re right, or we’re good enough, or that we’re as able as we believe ourselves to be – that our confidence, wherever it lay, is not misplaced. We want affirmation of ourselves and validation of our decisions. It’s nice to have courage acknowledged and celebrated. Very human and quite natural.
What’s also very human and quite natural is the want to wait for all that comforting stuff to be present before we begin. I want to save you the surprise I experienced. SPOILER AHEAD - I know everyone hates spoilers, and this is the second one. Believe me, if this were a fun one, I’d let you just see for yourself. I wanted to give you a heads up: the fear never goes away, at least mine hasn’t. Fear, like Count Olaf, has many, many disguises and hiding places. It pops up when I least expect it and when it’s most inconvenient. Since it’s nearly always present on some level, I’ve had to learn to work with it. Does this mean that I practice being afraid? Kinda. In small controlled doses.
On my own, my first inclination is to do the one or two things I believe I do well and learn to do those things even better. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with deepening my understanding of a thing for improvement, limiting my performance or doings to that narrow field ultimately limits my ability to even do those things. The fear or inner resistance we encounter as we retire our norms builds and shapes us internally much the same way that weight resistance builds physical muscles. You ever see a body builder who only or primarily does upper body workouts? Like, you can def tell they don’t do leg day. Like they might topple over headways because they appear unbalanced. I’m not clowning anyone, I just imagine that’s what I look like internally when I’m not giving myself an opportunity to work with resistance in other areas of performance. For that reason, I try to remain open to “the new.”
We don’t need to fear the fear when we discover it lurking. We don’t need to puzzle over or wrestle with it until it’s gone – cuz it won’t go. Puzzling over it and wrestling with it gets us stuck. We can gently learn to lean into it understanding that the unknown only holds the undiscovered, the unrealized, and the yet-to-be. Putting our energy into that space with optimism allows us to see and experience in the unknown all of what we ever hoped to discover, realize, and be.
What might be an area where you can “micro-dose” fear, so-to-speak?
If launching into the deep is too intimidating, then find a way to wade in the shallows a bit.
AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT - As a result of endeavoring to live fearlessly, I decided into wade the shallows a bit more. I took the next step out of my “box” and made a Twitter page. There’s the little twitter bird at the top of the page, now. As a twit, I tweeted, and my tweet was greeted with an invitation to be interviewed for a cool passion project of a fascinating young man. The project is titled, “People Just Like You.” The interview was recorded on Zoom and put on YouTube. It’ll be on other social media and the main PJLY site soon. In the meantime, if you’d like 30 minutes or so of our conversation via interview – here’s the link.
