Fear: Friend or Foe?

Fear has crept into our conversations, our lives, our minds, and our language like an unwelcome guest whose departure is unknown.

But what if it’s not the real cause of our inability to calm ourselves, to achieve something, or to step into something unknown?

So many of us spend so much energy trying to kill, annihilate, dominate, manage, or remove fear. The energy this takes is unnecessary.

I’d rather people be curious about their fear. Ask (without judgment) where it comes from? Explore if the current anxiety we are feeling is related to what is going on or is what is going on, only stirring old and dormant fears.

Have you experienced this kind of uncertainty before?

What happened?

Do you allow the fear to construct a future littered with ruin?

Why?

Are you trying to control the uncontrollable as a way to silence the fear?

How’s that going?

To my knowledge, no human has managed to live fearlessly, and I don’t believe that is either possible or even worth pursuing.

What if fear were not our enemy.

What if we allowed the fear to move over us without fighting it. What if we invited fear in and wondered what it was trying to tell us, or why it’s showing up now. What if we turned on the kettle, invited it over for a cup of tea, and got to know it a little more.

When you do this, fear has a tendency to soften. Its grip loosens, and we can connect to our truth again and see things clearly. Our ability to make better and more aligned decisions heightens.

So when you are ready. When the fear has ebbed ever so slightly, I invite you to try to look at this situation from a very different angle.

Maybe, just maybe, this pandemic is the Universe finally hollering, “Stop. Now slow down.”

Many of us now find ourselves in physical isolation, but I believe we shouldn’t isolate ourselves emotionally and mentally. That would be a tragedy. We’ve been given an opportunity, albeit horrific, to stop and create the space to reflect and ponder what’s most important in our lives.

I invite you to ask yourself, as I have asked myself recently,

“Was the life I inhabited before the virus all that I wanted it to be?”

“Who am I going to be beyond the virus?”

“Am I going to let go of something that’s not working?”

“Am I going to lean into something that could?

I think there’s something really, really powerful, about taking time to reflect upon who we’ve been up to today. Then considering who we are going to be as a person, as an individual, as a father, as a mother in the future.

Fear and uncertainty have set up residence in our collective experience and may not be leaving anytime soon.

So the choice is to either embrace it or fight it. Once you have not allowed yourself to succumb to the fear, you are in a rare position to really reflect on who you want to be tomorrow.

There will be many tomorrows. I’m sure of it.

My work: Be Brave. You Matter. Click Here.