The Price of Fear

Lately I have been reflecting on how hard it is to get motivated to do certain things in life. All of the sudden I am afraid, for example, to really take a look at my checkbook, and my financial situation, or to really take a look at what kind of foods I am eating during the day and perhaps take a look at putting regular exercise into my daily routine. Is it that I am lazy? Or irresponsible? Or just plain crazy?

I think that the answer is that I am afraid. Afraid of what knowing the answers will require of my life. When I think about it in a rational way, I have NO idea what I am afraid of. Since delving into those things of which I am afraid, would in fact only set me free. I know that it sounds like a “cliché” but it will set us free. On my wall in front of my desk, I have a quote, “Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have.” It is so true, that taking care of things in our life will begin to break all of those things that keep us from being all that we can be. But, the fact remains that, “I am afraid!”. I live in this place of fear, and therefore, things don’t get done and I become my own worse enemy. I spend a lot of time in “self sabatoge mode”. After all, I would never let a friend live through most of the things that I allow myself to live through. I would help my friend, and tell her to “suck it up” and make that phone call to the mortgage company or I would help her take one step at a time in figuring out a new budget so that life would not be so pressured. I would help her if she called me when she felt empty and wanted to go and spend money just to make herself feel good. I would help her figure out how to have that difficult conversation with her father in the nursing home, because certain words need to be said before it is too late. I have all the skills in my head to do those things, and for a friend, I would help her manage all these things. But, that is not how I live; I live in a way that doesn’t really make sense when I look at things in that rational place. So, what to do? How do we stop living in this place of fear?

I have a friend that seems fearless. He takes on the world, and believes that he will be successful. He doesn’t allow the voices to come into his head and think that what he dreams about is impossible. This is truly a character that I admire in him. How can he believe that all is possible? He says that he “knows” that if he puts the needed effort into something that there is no way it will turn out bad. Now, he does admit that sometimes things will not go the way he had planned, but they will NEVER go bad. He believes in God’s plan for good, even despite his flaws. He truly has a sense that God desires only good for him and his life, and he is ready to make the sacrifices and has the determination to create dreams and to pursue them. I have never seen him afraid. Because he does not live in fear, he lives in freedom, no matter what is going on his life. I want to be like that.

Fear sometimes, can be a wonderful thing to hold on to. Fear can be such a great excuse. It is in fact, the excuse that allows us to be creative in our excuses. All my life, I felt that I had a book lurking inside me. I felt that I had talent to write, but I was afraid to fail. I was defeated before I even started to write. So many things in my life didn’t get done because I was afraid to fail. But in this life, we will never be successful in anything if we do not take the risk to fail. After all, this is one of the things that I want my child to know, not to hold back, and to give life all that you can give. Only when you give life all you have, will you get the rewards that God has in store for you.

Recently, when John Travolta tragically lost his son, I was reminded that everyone In life has a cross to bear, that no matter how successful, how rich, how famous, everyone feels their heart break on occasion, and somehow, we stand back up and continue the journey we call our life. We can all experience a loss so great that we feel we can not go another step. But we need to live in faith. Not in some blind faith, but faith that God really wants good for us; that God knows more than we do, and that in every struggle, is an opportunity to learn something more about ourselves and this experience of life. In tragedy we can become closer to one another as human beings, and we can, ultimately become closer to God our creator. In knowing this, what on earth should we be afraid of?

Even with all this knowledge, I am afraid, and I live in that place. I am afraid that life will get the best of me, that I will not know the feeling of accomplishing even one dream, that I will spend the end of my life alone, that I will be laughed at, and the list could go on and on. How does someone get over the fear? I really believe that we get over the fear by doing a couple of things. (And, I am dedicating myself to adopt these into my life daily). First, we have to take a step at a time. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. We certainly wouldn’t start walking on a thousand mile journey, but we can take one step toward our destination. We have to look at our problems and obstacles in small digestible pieces. Only we can determine how big that step is, but we have to be able to manage it. I know, for me, I have to stop seeing life as Mt. Everest, and start taking the small hills first. Today, this hour, I can take care of one thing in which I was procrastinating because of my fear.

Secondly, we have to visualize the worse possible scenario, and we have to have a vision of what life could be like with that obstacle out of the way. We need to ask ourselves, “Is that feeling of freedom worth the risk of the worse possible outcome? It has been my experience that life is never as bad as the worse possible scenario I can create in my mind.

And most importantly, we have to believe that we have what it takes to reach our dreams. My friend that I spoke about has this unbelievable sense of his abilities and a great belief in himself, despite what the people around him think. What would life be like if we were no longer afraid? Would we be closer to those around us because we could finally share our feelings in a more honest, vulnerable way and they could do the same? Would people around us finally really know us, and therefore would we feel less lonely? Would we smile more? Would we be better parents? Siblings? Friends? What would life be like? What would I be like?
I don’t know about you, but I want to work on finding out.