If a bear is chasing me through the woods, or a minivan is chasing me through a parking lot, or a gun is pointed at me… I need to be scared in order to save my life.
Not every fear I have deserves that same level of intensity, although sometimes you wouldn’t know it.
I’ve read in a few different places that the part of our brain that senses fear hasn’t evolved with us. It works the same way it did when we were cave men or hunter gatherers and it literally reacts the same as it would if we were going to die.
Once I learned that, I started to qualify my fears by that measure.
Is this going to kill me? So far the answer has always been no.
Except that’s not entirely true. The first night I attended an open mic I thought I was going to die when I got up to read some of my blog in front of people. I even so much as told my mom I would when she asked what I was going to do that night, but I’m still here to tell the story.
Make friends with your fears they say… learn to dance with them, not run from them.
I wondered what the heck that even meant. I couldn’t even conjure up a visual for it.
But I have begun to recognize that as I have started to be more brave, the fears I had, that seemed so huge were completely unfounded. I was never going to die.
They do however, signal an area I need growth in. A place deep inside that tells me I have found my limit of what I believe I’m capable of.
When I wanted to stay small I would shrink back when I found that limit.
Now I know I need to do that thing that’s scaring me.
My fears are the definition of my comfort zone.
Nothing magical ever happens in your comfort zone, and I’ve started to seek out the edges of it.
Pema Chödrön says we can’t be fearless until we know the energy of fear.
We can’t know the energy of fear or how to be fearless if we don’t do things that scare us.