Why the hell haven’t you posted in a year?
One year ago I wrote a blog post that was supposed to be the beginning of an ongoing narration where I checked items off of my life-quest list as well as my journey as a writer and entrepreneur. I detailed out 87 things that I would like to accomplish or do before I die. Ironically, I checked some of them off of my list in 2019 as well as a few other exciting things that I hadn’t previously thought of….but I never posted about it.
So what kept me from sharing my travel adventures and lessons learned from being an aspiring author and entrepreneur? FEAR. The immobilizing emotion that keeps us from going after our goals and dreams. Fear of being criticized. Fear of being a failure. Fear of being held accountable by my friends and family to pursue my goals and dreams. Fear of success. Fear of letting people down. Fear that the pursuit of my dreams would take longer than expected. Fear that I was going down the wrong path. Fear of being judged negatively. Fear of social media trolls and hecklers. Fear of experiencing more fear.
What does FEAR Eat?
What I learned along the way is that fear is a living breathing organism. It’s something that we begin to experience as we start taking action towards our dreams. It’s provoked by emotions, not rational thinking and it feeds on…TIME. Many of us fail to act because we are over-thinking or constantly in preparation mode instead of taking action. The longer we wait, the more we feed fear it’s nourishment of choice. The longer we allow fear to feed at the trough of time, the more likely we are to talk ourselves out of taking action. Far too often we give fear way more time than it deserves and it becomes an over-fed monster that keeps us from moving forward in life.
In order to starve fear of its favorite food we need to action on our inklings and desires immediately. There is a limited window that exists between the moment you have an instinct to act and your mind killing it. Essentially it’s a deeply engrained protection mechanism designed to keep the human condition, and the species, safe. The mind senses danger which manifests as the sensation and illusion of fear. In efforts to protect ourselves the mind forces the physical body to retreat and step away from all actions and activities that are making it experience fear. The problem is that seldom are we committing rash, irreversible decisions. We’re not being destructive, illegal or harmful. We are not in any danger. This safety mechanism of the mind kills our action and motivation when we are about to do things like speak up in class, make an important phone call, ask our boss for a raise or approach the cute girl at the coffee shop.
“Do one thing every day that scares you. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face”. -Eleanor Roosevelt
How do we break through the wall of fear and take action?
So what if we reframed fear? What if we faced it, embraced it and used it as an indicator that we are on the correct path? What if we always used fear as a reason to move forward instead of stopping or retreating? In many cases fear is a direct indicator that we are making the correct decisions and moving towards our destiny. It is universal intelligence letting us know that we are reaching new heights and stepping into new levels. Fear is something that we want to always be experiencing so that we are repeatedly stepping out of our comfort zones and avoiding complacency. Developing new fears is perhaps a sign that we are becoming a better version of ourselves and accomplishing greater things.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” -Mary Oliver
How lucky are we to be alive?
Researching the biology of fear, forced me to contemplate the capacity of what human beings are able to accomplish (dare I say conquer!) in this single precious lifetime. In order to truly grasp this concept I needed to find something scientific that calculated the probability of you and I being alive at this time and place in history. It turns out that, according to Dr. Ali Binazir, each one of us is a certified walking miracle with a 1 in 400 trillion (or more!) chance of being alive. In Dr. Binazir’s study he attempts to quantify the likelihood of you and I coming into existence. Our existence here and now on planet earth is the result of a highly unlikely and miraculous chain of events that are representative of an unbroken reproductive lineage of 4 billion years.
To put it into perspective:
The chance of being struck by lightning are 1 in 3,000.
The chance of being attacked and killed by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067.
The chance of winning the lottery in the united states are about 1 in 300,000,000.
Albert Einstein once said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is though nothing is a miracle. The other is though everything is a miracle.” I think this quote goes the same for how we view ourselves and the humanity. You either live life as if you are a miracle or you are not. How would we act differently if we reminded ourselves daily that the chance of us being born was 1 in 400 trillion? How would we treat our bodies? How would we behave in traffic? How passionately would we follow our dreams?
For many of us, we have pretty amazing lives and have more control than what we think. We have the capacity to reframe the way we look at our existence and choose happiness. Drink a little less alcohol, make friends with strangers, read more books, create more art, and for god’s sake treat your loved ones the way you treat your Netflix subscription. Stop complaining about things that don’t matter.
We will continue to experience fear for the rest of our lives and from what my research has shown me, that’s a good thing. So I encourage you to face your fears and take action on whatever you are dragging your heals on….and start acting like the fxxking miracle you are!
“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and to shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to it’s lowest terms…” -Henry David Thorough