February 5, 2013

Checking Fear at the Door

Fear is the highest fence.

Fear is the highest fence by mrsdkrebs.

I have a frenemy in my life. His name is Fear.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always talking about conquering fear, so it’s strange for me to call fear a frenemy, implying that, to some extent, fear is a friend.

Now don’t get me wrong, fear sucks — but I need a healthy amount of fear in my life. Fear is that voice that keeps me in check to some extent.

Fear is the voice that lets me know that I’m doing something challenging.

You can’t be too comfortable in your creative and business pursuits. A little fear lets you know that you’re doing something different. You’re adventuring into new territory. 

The dark side of this is that if you don’t keep fear in check, it can rule you.

Do you ever do any of the following:

  • Not take a risk or try something new because of what could happen.
  • Not follow through on your big idea because you feel like you can’t do it.
  • Diagnose yourself, life, business with the worst case scenario outcome without evidence.

In these cases, fear is ruling you, you are not ruling fear.

Here’s how I keep fear in check in my life: I act.

The more I dwell in my head, the more likely I am to let fear beat me up. So I must take action.

I have the following quote on my office door:

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.  If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Get out and get busy.”
– Dale Carnegie.

How do you give life your all while keeping fear in check? Is there a place for fear in your life?

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January 21, 2013

Move Through Your Fears With Curiosity and Action

Replace fear with possibility. Approach it with curiosity and action.

These past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on the year past and the many things that materialized for me in 2012. The list is long, ranging from piloted workshops, PDF booklets and new consultation services, to new artwork, new connections, and my contributions here.

Though I know there were many factors at play, in hindsight, I attribute much of my ability to make these things happen to my chosen theme for the year: moving through trepidation with curiosity and action.

This new-to-me approach worked so well, I intend to keep it in my back pocket as I move forward into 2013.

How it works: It’s simple, but not always easy.

When faced with an opportunity that scares you, what if you set out with the goal of replacing fear with possibility, of replacing…

“I could never do that, I’m not ready. It scares me.”
with
“What do I need to do to be ready? Is there a small action I can take and see where that leads?”

“I better not push my luck and do that extra <insert challenging task here>, I’m already pretty tired and I’m new to this.”
with
“How about I try and see how far I can get?”

“Who am I to do <insert idea/initiative/project here>? I’m going to fall flat on my face.”
with
“Just try it and see how it goes. If it flops, re-think it. If it doesn’t, do it again and make it better.”

When faced with uncertainty, instead of worrying about every possible way things could wrong, what if you tried asking yourself*…

“I wonder how this is going to pan out?”

“I wonder how I’ll choose to handle this?”

“Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of making this work?”

(* Thank you Susan Jeffers for this line of wisdom.)

Fear has its place and raison d’être, but often it doesn’t serve us at all.

This way of approaching it encourages gentle risk-taking and releases expectations. At worst it amounts to a lesson learned; at best, it may lead to something better than we ever could have imagined.

Why don’t you try it and see how it all pans out?

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October 18, 2012

The Gifts of Imperfection

I always love when I’m going along through life and I happen to pick up a book that gets me to face all of the things I’ve been avoiding. This happened when I recently picked up The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. It got me to face  important things like authenticity, self love, and just owning up to being imperfect. I’ve gone around lately so busy, and so determined to get everything right, that I’ve been driving myself crazy. I’m an imperfect human, and instead of getting angry at myself when I forget to call someone back, or show up late for a meeting, I should anticipate that these things are going to happen, and acknowledge that it’s okay.

Something else that has been getting in my way lately is authenticity. Normally, I pride myself on being raw and authentic in how I portray myself. However, how can this be possible when I’m trying to make sure I get everything just right? It’s an impossible task, and clearly not one I should be aspiring to live up to.

If I haven’t been raw and authentic with myself lately, that surely doesn’t set me up to be very raw and authentic with anyone else.

I’ve shut myself off to the things that I want because they make me vulnerable, and, oh my, is vulnerability scary. But it was so reaffirming to go through this book, because within the past week, I’ve started to make life choices about things that no longer need to be in my life, what I really need, and how I’m going to make those things happen.

All this week, I’ve been making myself vulnerable from sharing this big idea I have with people who are far more knowledgeable than I, stepping down from a position that I’d lost heart in, and choosing to give love a chance with someone whom it failed with in the past. So it has been a big week of feeling extremely vulnerable, and I was terrified the whole time — terrified of my idea being shut down, terrified of letting people down, terrified of being rejected — but I did it anyway.

I thought a lot all week about the fact that life comes with no gurantees, and decided there were two things I could do with that.

I could either live life safely, and only do things where I had control of the outcome, or I could open myself up to the possibility of hurt, if that means potentially finding greatness.

I know there will be times where I’m vulnerable, and my biggest fear becomes reality. Yet I also know that won’t be the case every time. And it’s that little ounce of hope that vulnerability might lead to great things that keeps me open to the idea.

I could go on and on about why you should pick up this book, but I really think it’s something we can all benefit from, as it deals with the things we all struggle with as humans. The book guides you through this idea of cultivating a wholehearted life, and tell me, who doesn’t want that?

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.” It’s going to bed at night thinking, “Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

~Brené Brown

So tell me, how have you been vulnerable lately?

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October 17, 2012

Fear in Sheep’s Clothing

Small Figure Painting by Finch Arts – Click picture for details

I write a lot about fear. They say “write what you know.”

I’m something of an expert in being a scaredy cat. I’ve been doing it since birth. As a kid, I was afraid of loud noises, the dark, spiders, water (especially the ocean), and Santa Claus. And you still don’t want to see me when some eight-legged thing comes into view. Or perhaps you do – if you enjoy watching other people’s hysterics.

When I was little, fear was so straightforward. It had a specific cause – a clap of thunder – and a specific result – me, crawling under the coffee table.

As I get older, fear is trickier to identify. Sure, when I’m afraid to turn the lights off after a particularly edgy episode of Murder She Wrote (I wish I were kidding), that’s pretty easy to see. But the trigger isn’t always so clear.

Sometimes I’m not sure what’s making me afraid. And sometimes – and this is what I’m really trying to get at – I don’t even know that what I’m feeling is fear.

Recently I signed up for a new type of exercise class. It was something that I’d heard about other people doing, and it sounded interesting. But as I neared the day of the first class, I started thinking about how inconvenient the time was. I started to wonder whether I really had time to go or whether it might be better if I just skipped it so that my afternoon routine would go more smoothly. I headed to work the morning of the class with a bag of workout clothes on my arm, but I was beginning to think it just didn’t make any sense to go. It would mean my dog would be at home alone longer, that I’d get home late and have to rush to get dinner ready and prepare a blog post for the next day and probably get to bed late. The whole thing was very inconvenient. Instead, I decided, I’d just take the dog on a longer walk and call it a day. And then around lunch time, the instructor emailed all of us who had signed up to say how excited she was that we were coming.

And I realized I had to go.

And then I realized that my heart was pounding. My breathing was shallow, and my hands were trembling a little on the keyboard.

I was scared.

I was really scared. I was scared of trying this new thing. I was scared of being in a room with lots of people I didn’t know doing something I didn’t know how to do. I was scared of watching that process in a floor-to-ceiling mirror. I was scared of the uncomfortable feeling of being vulnerable in my own body.

And all my chatter about inconvenience and my busy schedule had absolutely nothing to do with inconvenience or my busy schedule.

It had all been about fear, and I didn’t even known it. If the instructor hadn’t emailed, I may never have.

I’d like to tell you that I went to the class and that it was wonderful, and I was so glad that I overcame my fear.

But I can’t.

I did go to the class.

It was awful. I hated it, and I cried after it was over. And I vowed never to do any class like that ever again.

But of course, it stayed with me, as hard things tend to do. Over the last few months, I’ve remembered it again and again – mainly the way I felt beforehand and the way I felt during the class – uncomfortable, exposed, embarrassed, weak. For a while I thought about how there must be a lesson in there, and it must be that I’m supposed to go back to that class and push through my fear and learn to love it.

And I suppose that would be one option.

But I decided that I don’t have to recognize my fear and overcome it in the same breath.

Maybe right now it’s enough to see that it’s there and begin to move, slowly, in the direction of courage. For me, the result is that I’m training for a 5k race, something else that makes me afraid in similar ways – of appearing weak, of experiencing physical discomfort, of not doing it well enough – but something that feels more attainable.

I’m starting off small, but every time I finish a training run I feel strong and courageous.

I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back to one of those classes, but I hope that I keep challenging myself. The biggest fear for me as a creative soul is that my creativity will stagnate, that I’ll get stuck in a rut and remain at a stand-still forever.

The experience in that class, awful as it was, certainly got me moving.

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August 21, 2012

Fearing Our Own Creative Work

Write Write Write by the dreamy giraffe

The other day I sat down to make a writing schedule for myself.  I’d read for the four hundredth time how important it is for aspiring writers to set aside time every day to write and build up that creative discipline.

I weighed different time options in my head.  Morning?  If I wanted to do it before work, I’d have to get up at least by 6:00 am, maybe 5:30 if I wanted a good chunk of time.  And then once my office moves in a few months and I have a longer commute, probably more like 5:00.  That seems awfully early, and I can just see myself turning off the alarm and going back to sleep more often than not.

Okay, how about at night?  9:00 pm?  That’s when Anne Lamott talked about starting disciplined writing, and look at her.  Of course, then I’d have to skip out on evening snuggle and watch television time with my fiancee.  That seems like a bad idea – I like our evening routine, and it’s important for us to unwind after the workday.

Alright then, how about right after work?  5:00 every day?  Eh.  That’ll make it difficult to take care of the kids and their afterschool activities.

This is when I knew there was something else going on.

How? I don’t have kids.  I’m not pregnant.  I’m not even trying to get pregnant.

I was projecting out to some date years into the future on which my writing schedule would fail.

Why do we find every excuse (even ones that don’t exist) to keep ourselves from our creative work?

For a while I thought it was because I wasn’t really meant to be a writer, because I didn’t really want it.  But the more I dig into the resistance, the more I see it for what it is – fear.

Setting aside time for our own creative work is a frightening affair.

It touches on many of our scariest demons – vulnerability, selfishness, perfectionism.  That’s bound to be met with some reticence.  But it doesn’t mean you should jump ship.

No!  Now is the time to practice greeting that fear with strength – maybe just a little at first.  For me, it’s one day of sitting down with the blank paper.  And then it’s the next day.  Maybe for you it’s ten minutes of meditation or finally signing up for that painting class.

Whatever it is, don’t let fear keep you from your special creative work.

We’re stronger than that.

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