All of us are afraid of something. Afraid of dying, scared of heights, petrified of spiders and so forth. Fear is a part of life and is often useful when listened to and acted on appropriately. It helps guide behaviour and hopefully helps us avoid danger and unnecessary harm. To not be afraid is to live a life without natural boundaries. So, it makes sense that there are fears that are worth paying attention to. However, so many of the things that people proclaim to fear exist within their minds as opposed to reality. Yes, you could be attacked by a shark when swimming in the ocean but probably not. Sure, intimacy could result in a broken heart which would be sore but not as painful as regret and the ache of loneliness. Fear of pain, of loss, of hurt…these fears can keep us frozen and stuck. We avoid and distort reality to fit our fear-based narratives and in this way, we become willing prisoners of fear. The way out of the prison of fear is to recognize it for what it is and to start to truly see what these fears are-giant signposts indicating areas of much needed self-development. These experiences are the doorways to living your best life but fronting up requires bravery, discipline, compassion, and patience. Seeing your life for what it is and taking full responsibility for it and the state it is in, is brave work.
This does not mean that difficult life experiences have not contributed to where you are or how you understand yourself and the world. Not at all. In fact, recognizing the impact of life and accepting hardships is also requires an immense amount of courage. All of us are generally operating on outdated software-ways of behaving, thinking, interacting, and feeling that we have developed in response to our environment (family, culture, traumas, relationships) that were helpful and adaptive at the time but are less helpful as we mature and often limit genuine growth. To update one’s software requires honesty and strength-to discard limiting and unhelpful ways of being with compassion and discipline, and to scaffold and nurture the development of new ways of being which have been lying dormant inside, waiting to be discovered.
Similarly, beginning to recognize that hard times and difficult experiences cannot be avoided requires preparation. If you decide to summit a mountain you hopefully go prepared and so too with life. Acceptance of difficulties means learning how to support yourself through hard times. Why not? If we know that sore emotions and difficult emotions are inevitable, why not plan for them. This includes learning how to become more comfortable sitting with distressing emotions, saving money, having healthy distractions such as hobbies, going to therapy, and any other way you can think of to ‘parent’ yourself well through the highs, neutrals, and lows of life. The mindset of getting through tough times with grace, with care, and forethought helps to reduce suffering as well as fear. Resilience blossoms every time we help ourselves move through the uncomfortable, truly embrace the comfortable, and rest easy in the neutral.
