Fear. He’s a funny little prankster, isn’t he?
Okay, yes, I’ve assigned a gender and prefer to picture “him” as this ghoulish git akin to one of those scary flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz or that sleazy lead creep on TMZ. You know the one.
Fear. It makes me mad. And you wouldn’t like to see me when I get mad. Grrr….
Fear. I don’t like it.
I realize that I’m not breaking new ground here with this heady observation but more than anything, I don’t like what fear DOES to me. I’m an action-oriented person. When the you-know-what hits the fan, I’m the kind of person that usually jumps into position and does what she has to do to take care of things. But when that bastard Fear gets in the way of my usual take-charge mode, I freeze. I’m stuck. Paralyzed.
This week, I posed the question:
What is your greatest fear? Why is that and what have you done to attempt to appease it or obliterate it completely?
Did you have a chance to contemplate your Achilles’ heel? I welcome your own thoughts on the subject. As for me…
I struggled to narrow it down to one fear, but then I realized that a lot of my fears certainly not unique to me (fear of death, fear of failure, fear of rejection, etc.) all seem to have one common thread woven among them: a fear of missing out. Some of you out there may know exactly what I’m talking about but for those of you who don’t, I’ll give it a go.
I’m one of those folks who hates to be in the other room getting ready or talking on the phone while friends are visiting with each other in the other room. I want to be part of that conversation.
If the hubby’s talking with family on the phone and I’m nearby in the room, I want to know what they’re talking about.
If I choose to go to destination A but was contemplating destination B, there’s going to be a little piece of me contemplating what might have been had I taken route B.
I try to stay true to my decisions and not live with regret or fear, but it’s easier to say than it is to do sometimes.
I guess you could say my fear is… an Aerosmith song. “I don’t want to miss a thing…”
How do I manage it? Well, I don’t really. I know that I should though. I definitely need to learn how to focus more on the present moment and not on what could be happening instead. (If anyone else who shares or once shared this affliction would like to pass along pointers, please feel free to leave me a comment with these thoughts. Advice not judgment is always welcomed, so thanks in advance.)
I don’t know that my fear is preventing me from making the right decisions for me, but I wonder sometimes if I’m missing out on the full experience of accepting and living with them if even a smidgen of my attention or focus is a little bit somewhere else. I’m a work in progress and this is just one DIY project among many on my workbench.
So what about you: what fears may be getting in the way of where you want to go or who you want to be? Lay it on me and don’t hold back. No judgment here.
Cheers to finding that daily spark in your life!
Chris
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