Day 2/30: 3 Fears

 

"Describe 3 legitimitate fears and how they came to be?"

I don’t know why this was so hard of a post for me to write this morning. What am I afraid of? It seems like the easiest question, right? I know what I’m afraid of, honestly, but the why is so much harder. Sometimes, your fears aren’t rational. Sometimes, you know you can’t do anything to avoid them. Sometimes, they don’t make sense. But they are still very real fears.

So, here is my very best attempt at explaining…

1.       Becoming numb emotionally (both on a personal and worldwide level)- I am a naturally emotional person. I have been my entire life. Movies make me cry. Books make me cry. Even a particularly heavy blog post can bring me to tears. When I was younger, I used to wish I wasn’t that way. I wished that the little things didn’t bother me. I didn’t want the kids to think I was weak, weird, or vulnerable- I wanted to seem tough.
Emotion doesn’t make you weak. Emotion makes you human. If you become numb to emotion you lose the ability to be compassionate or empathetic. What would a world without compassion be like? If no one cared about their neighbor or helped the underdog? All those feelings- the good, the bad, the overwhelming- they are shaping you. Every second of every day. They are helping you to learn. They are helping you to grow. They are helping you to understand. I think we all have those moments where we wish we could just shut it all off but we are better people because we feel.
 
2.       At first, I thought my second strongest fear was fear of failure, but that isn’t really it. My second strongest fear is judgement. Recently, I “failed” in what I would consider a pretty big way. Don’t worry, I’ll go into a lot more detail later in this 30 day challenge but for now I’ll just leave you with this- I had wanted to take on this project for such a long time and I fought hard to get this position. Only, it wasn’t what I thought it was (what is?) and I couldn’t cut it. It was very public and I basically had to just admit defeat.
I felt absolutely humiliated. I felt like people thought they knew more about me than they actually did. That somehow, because I couldn’t do this one thing, I had no worth to them. I was less than them.
Here’s the thing though- yes, judgment is scary, especially when it’s negative. But I’m just human. It isn’t an excuse- it’s liberating. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. So why do we judge people for doing the exact same thing that we do by nature? We fail. We make messes of things from time to time. We learn and we get back up and try again.  
You can drive yourself insane trying to avoid judgment. You can try to be perfect. You can carry all that pressure on your shoulders. At the end, of the day, though – “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world but there's still going to be someone who hates peaches” (-Dita Von Teese)

3.       Lack of Control. We joke that this runs in our family. My aunt, my mom, my sister, my cousins- we all claim to have a hard time with this. Let me explain with my own personal example- I hate roller coasters. They terrify me. Oddly enough, it’s not the heights, drops, twists, or turns that make me uneasy. It’s the idea that for those 2 minutes I have absolutely no control of what happens to me. They strap you into a seat, send you into the air and you are at mercy of the roller coaster. If it wants you to go up, you have no choice. If it wants to spin you around 100 times until you vomit, well- hope you ate a light lunch!

I’m convinced there is no real rhyme or reason to why these things bother me. They just do.
But here is the funny thing about fear- If you let it, it can control your life. It can ruin every relationship you are ever in. It can stop you from attempting to reach your dreams. It can be the fine line between failure and success.  You are stronger than your fears. Face them head on. I think you'll find, it's really quite the rush!

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