“Are you kidding?” I thought, after a friend recently told me she was inspired by my seeming fearlessness. Her comment left me wondering about fear – the kind that keeps us from acting, from deciding, from connecting to others, from sharing our abilities, from speaking up,… from becoming who we are supposed to be.
I feel somewhat knowledgeable – not because I trained and practiced as a psychiatrist, but because I’ve spent many of life’s moments worrying about looking foolish, saying the wrong thing, making mistakes, bothering others and more.
My friend’s comment helped me realize that many of my fears, though once obstacles, are slowly becoming background noise. When I do find myself hesitating instead of living, I try to think about the following:
- Accept that self critical voice and fear of failure. Say, 'Hello!" and keep going. If you have to give these internal adversaries five minutes to run down the list of why you can’t accomplish your goals, do that, but then excuse yourself and move on.
- Act. The first piece of art I made, I was sure would be the last, but I did another, and another. Each time, I was meeting part of myself I didn’t know was there. My creative confidence grew, but not all at once. We are more capable than we know. We can’t know unless we start and we can’t know how capable unless we keep going.
- Fail….really. The bigger the better. It can be hard to plan this, but hopefully it will happen and then you can let go of the idea that you control the universe. The prize is wisdom and a sense of peace. Oh yeah – it’ll be painful…but that’s okay, because only then do you truly connect to the human condition and well .… to other humans. My failed first marriage (or I should say, my failure to know myself well enough when I got married), was perhaps just what I needed to grow up. I went into that marriage (at 26) believing that happiness was about making someone else happy, and came out an adult (for me that was 31) knowing I had to figure out what made me happy. But for that failure, I would have never ended up in Louisville. I wouldn’t have met my husband. I wouldn't have my daughter. I wouldn’t have found happiness as I know it.
- Share your fears. Our vulnerabilities connect us - we all feel vulnerable about something. Who wants to hang out with someone who is never scared or uncertain? How boring would that be? How boring would they be?
- Surround yourself with people who love you and know how to show it – who can listen instead of talk, try to get it rather than fix it and can laugh with you and not at you when you’re struggling.
- Know what to fear. Failing might hurt for a while, but not like the pain of living a life of regret for not following your dreams.