I am sure I wrote about fear before on my blog. Back then I was exploring each emotion and trying to articulate it.
I turned 40 yesterday. And the way I deal with fear is changing. Basically, I want to stop being afraid of anything.
What does it mean though - To be afraid, and to give up fear?
First reaction of being afraid is to give up control to someone else, to avoid confrontation. To hide. To go silent. To let the sabotage happen even when it is happening in front of you, to you.
You are not the victim of self sabotage at that point, you are the cause of it.
Being afraid seems like being fearful of something terrible which can happen to you, but if you have really felt afraid - you will know it is almost always a fear of losing something which you value. We attach our identity , our way of living to things like jobs and relationships, to wealth, to cities - and that becomes the cradle of fear.
One classic example is - putting up with toxic co-workers and toxic environment at work because we get afraid of losing the job, of losing the identity we attach to our work. Same goes for relationships - we put up with toxicity because we are afraid to let go of the familiar and to go into the unfamiliar zone.
First casualty of fear is confidence. And thus, once you enter a zone of being afraid, confidence drops like a stone ball in a pond. This then keeps you stuck in this zone, because you are lacking the minimal confidence required to leave this zone and enter a new terrain.
What does being unafraid mean then ?
Doesn’t matter - one who lives a life of being afraid can reap no gains from knowing what being unafraid means. Its fiction, like a hermit smoking away in some spiritual city. Its something too far to think about. Its akin to thinking how it feels to be on stage as a rockstar when 20,000 people are cheering for you. It doesn’t matter because you don’t know and you know that you will never know it.
But notice the word “minimal” I used before.
This then keeps you stuck in this zone, because you are lacking the minimal confidence required to leave this zone and enter a new terrain.
Minimal Confidence.
One can be afraid, and keep feeling the fear. But then an act of mustering the minimal threshold confidence to step out of the zone - that is the reality of tacking fear. It does not leave, you just move on carrying your fear in tow. And maybe one day, as you keep walking - you can reach the fearlessness of that hermit, but till then, it will be about carrying on the path of fearlessness. Even if the fear still weighs you down.
