What do you fear?

Everyone is afraid of something. Sometimes it’s spiders or heights or the dark or death. Even the bravest of souls is afraid of something. It’s human nature to fear things that are foreign to us. Things we can’t control or understand are often the most terrifying things of all. Because if you strip away everything else, what we ALL fear is exactly the same really. 

We fear the unknown. 

Why are we so afraid to die? Because none of us is absolutely sure what comes next. If anything. But we think we might know. But what if we are wrong? So then fear creeps in. The unknown is the part that is scary. Death is quick and easy really. It just happens. We really only fear what happens next, because we don’t know the answer. 

Fear is also what makes people afraid of the opposite too. People are also terrified to live. What should I do with my life? What if this choice is wrong? What if this person leaves me? What if I lost my job? What if I never find happiness? 

We’ve all had these thoughts. No one is immune. Sometimes the choices in life seem so unfair and confusing that we have to leap into that unknown and do something, even if we don’t know how it’ll turn out. But most of us get paralyzed at the thought of doing the wrong thing. Making the wrong choice. We ask friends and family and strangers and the Universe itself to help us make a choice. We are so scared of the unknowable outcomes of our choices, sometimes we never make one. And our life just becomes stagnant. Empty and pointless because it never changes. And it never changes because we are too scared to make a change and a choice. So we just wither away and start dying while we live. 

Sometimes people feel in their gut, and their hearts, their intuition is telling them to do one thing. But then everyone else tells them to do another. So they ignore their own intuition and do what others expect or would do in your place. And it doesn’t turn out well. So we immediately blame ourselves for being stupid and how you should have known better. And you might even tell yourself that you’re always wrong no matter what you do. 

And that just makes the fear of choices even bigger. But you fail to recognize that your intuition was correct all along. If you had listened to YOURSELF and ONLY yourself, you would have already known the correct choice. Even if it wasn’t a popular one. Or even one you wanted to make. Sometimes we can’t see the bigger picture, so we just have to trust we followed the right road. 

But most of us have a hard time following our own instincts. We doubt ourselves and our abilities. But on the occasions we DO follow it, we’ve seen how well a situation can turn out. And we’ve seen ourselves avert disasters too that way. We have all seen our intuition work for us. Some of us more than others. Yet when it comes down to a very important crossroads in your life, you suddenly don’t think it’s real. You can’t trust it. It was fluke that it helped me before. You talk yourself out of trusting your own intuition, because FEAR is telling you that you are wrong and you always fail and should just give up. 

So a lot of us do give up. Maybe not forever. But the cycle continues. We lose faith in ourselves, and our choices and our lives. And then we witness our intuition work for us again. So we dare to try and use it to guide us again. But the minute something truly scary happens again, fear pushes aside that momentary surge of confidence, because again, how could possibly know what to do with THIS problem or situation? It’s never happened before. It’s unknown. So now what do I do?

Panic clouds everything. Panic is caused by fear. And what are you afraid of? Making the wrong choices? Understandable. We all want to do what is best for ourselves and our lives and our loved ones. It’s a terrible feeling when something doesn’t work out the way you hope or expect. But did you make the choice because your gut told you it was the best thing to do at that moment in time? Or did you make the choice because of panic and it was the easiest choice? 

If you say the first one, then whatever choice you made was not truly wrong. Maybe you needed to experience whatever that choice brought to you? Maybe it was a lesson to help you grow or learn? Maybe that choice will lead you to the real place you were supposed to be? We all hate ‘learning experiences’ when they have to do with experiencing losses and suffering and just plain horrible times in our lives. Nobody WANTS to learn any of that. 

But we all have to. It’s part of life. And if everything were easy, it would be very dull and wouldn’t teach you anything. Sometimes we need to weather storms and lose things and people we love. If we never lose anything, we can’t fully appreciate what we still have. And can still find. 

If you say you choose the second option of panicking and always doing whatever is easiest, you’ve chosen to give up any control you had of your life and just let the wind take you where it wants. And often times these panicked easy choices, aren’t really choices at all. They are your way of hiding away in a shell and making a ‘choice’ to just stay right where you are. It’s not so bad in that shell right? You’re used to it. You kinda hate it. But hey, it’s home right? 

So your ‘choice’ was really no choice at all. It was the choice to not grow or learn or change. It was the choice to remain scared and stagnant. And deep down you are fully aware of what a coward you really are. But you won’t change it. Why? Are you happy feeling like a coward? No. Does that thought eat at you all the time, even though you tell yourself it’s not true? Yes. Did your ‘choice’ to do nothing make you happier? Of course not. How could it?

The only way anything can ever get better is if we let go of fear and follow our instincts. Where do you REALLY want to go from here? Do you like your shell? Do you have a fortress of solitude you feel pretty comfy in? Is that where you want to die? Or do you want to live? Are you honestly less afraid to die than you are to live?

That sounds crazy doesn’t it? But I think we have all been in a place where it feels true. But it’s not. Life is for living. Sometimes we fail. But sometimes we fly. You won’t ever know which until you jump. Conquer fear. And see what’s on the other side of it.