Fear

Fear

Dear JOY! Can you help me? For the last few months I have been feeling more and more immobilized. I doubt every decision I make, I’m too scared to do anything. Please help.

signed: Deer in headlights

Dear Deer :-} There is a wonderful book by lovable furry old Grover from Sesame Street called ‘The Monster at the end of this Book’. The title scares Grover so badly that he does everything he can think of to stop you from turning the pages so you never get to the end. He is seen boarding them up, gluing them together, bricking and chaining and barring the way, becoming increasingly hysterical at every turn “Don’t you understand, there is a MONSTER at the end of this book and every page you turn brings us closer to it. STOP turning pages!”

Of course the Monster turns out to be Grover himself who is very embarrassed by the whole thing.

I reckon it’s the best, truest, most concise book on fear ever written. Grover discovered that fear has a secret, an astonishing secret it does not want you to know.

Fear can only exist unexamined!

It hides in dark places, lurking in generalities, looming in sweeping statements and outdated beliefs. It makes loud threats and scary noises, and challenges our faith and confidence and surety.

When you drag fear out and expose it to the light of day it begins to bluster and harrumph. As soon as you begin to pick it apart with hard logic and insist that it make itself accountable, fear shrivels into shamed nothingness and slinks away.Try this amazing experiment yourself, you can make fear whimper and run for the hills jut by exposing it for what it is. Go on, I dare ya. What does your fear tell you? What nastiness is it whispering in your ear? It’s time to find out if what he is saying is something you need to accept as truth, or even something you need to pay any attention to.

“I can’t. I’m scared of what they will think. I don’t think I can do it. I’m afraid of change and the unknown.” If you feel thoughts like these no longer serve you, straighten your spine, grab fear by his scrawny neck and pull him out to face you. Now put on your sternest face and find out what EXACTLY is it that you fear. No generalities, clear specifics only. Take this down to the nuts and bolts and find out how much of a hold this fear actually needs to have on you.Isn’t it as true that you can do ANYTHING as long as it’s broken down into small enough, comprehensible bits? Look at what you have already achieved! Observe the ‘impossible’ being done all around you every day. Who are THEY anyway? No really, pull out names! On a scale of 1 to 100 how important are the opinions of these people to you? What about the people who really matter, what would they think? What about your opinion? What would YOU think of yourself?

Isn’t change just taking what you are and adding choices to it?

Weren’t ALL of your most beloved things once unknown to you?Fear makes it possible for us to experience ourselves as courage. Only through fear can we know bravery, for courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

The absence of fear would make courage redundant! How much would you really enjoy a life without challenge and the chance to test yourself? How much would we grow if we lived in Utopia? How long would it take to get bored?