My Relationship with Fear

“I think you are smarter than you let on, I think you are more sure than you are willing to admit. Ask yourself why you hold back or ask yourself why you hold on. You know that being sure means taking risks, so ask yourself why you keep acting like your not up for the challenge.” That paragraph jumped off the page to me as I read my Nylon horoscope for the month of November 2017.

I really had to ask myself why?

Why is it that when continuous questions of self doubt arise like “what if I’m not ready? or what if I’m not sure?” I give them way too much weight and purposely fight to hold back. I hold back what I really want for fear that it may not turn out. 

Fear! My relationship with fear is the cause for my constant uncertainty. 

The interesting thing about this relationship is that I am constantly proving it wrong. I’ve spent most of my life taking extreme risks and going for the gold externally, but internally there is always that voice. The voice that speaks to me the entire time with worry, concern and sometimes paralysis. I cannot even express the amount of times I’ve had to entertain my Lila and Eve personalities to overcome stagnation.

Fear is hands down the most tumultuous relationship I’ve ever had, but overtime I’ve somehow been able to turn it into a motivator instead of a limitation. 

As difficult as it has been and a constant work in progress I’ve been able to accomplish a lot by not letting fear work me, but by me working fear. However, that Nylon paragraph still hit me to my core. Self doubt will always rear its head because we are human, but I realized that it was rearing its little head more consistently than it should because I was sure.

I’ve gotten to a point in my life where being confident and committed to a goal, step, decision was starting to become easier for me and that was different. Old habits are truly hard to break so by me letting fear creep in the way it does I was giving fear the control it used to have.

To put it simply, I was holding on. 

Holding onto fear, holding onto doubt, holding onto old habits that obviously never really served me. I’ve been up for the challenge called my life for quite some time and it was obviously time for me to embrace that.