Fear Is Not The Enemy

Up until I reframed my perspective on it, I understood fear to be an enemy, one that goes to great lengths to sabotage and impede my progression in life. Unbeknownst to my naive self, fear isn't the enemy. It was my relationship with fear, and my treatment of fear that led to self-sabotage. 

Fear is an emotion, likened to happiness, pleasure, sadness, disgust etc. If I allow mental capacity for it to exist without denial, suppression or destructive thoughts about its existence, it yields little control. It wreaks internal havoc when I feel fear about the existence of fear, coupled with self-deprecating thoughts, resulting in a vicious cycle. I refuse to fuel fear with endless ‘what ifs’, hypotheticals impossible to completely prepare for.

Fear is not only my friend, but it is fuel. Particularly, the synergy between fear and anger is incredibly powerful for me. Fear directs me to do something I've been avoidant of for whatever reason; to confront the prison guard of my internally generated cage. Anger from being stagnant or psychologically caging myself kicks my system into gear. I leverage this fuel to act and continue building momentum, soaring to greater heights, reclaiming freedom. Freedom in my own mind, despite the chaotic world I reside in.

Now, whenever I feel fear about a particular situation, I assess it with both logic and gut-intuition. If there is no logical reason to avoid proceeding with taking action, and my recalibrated intuition isn't screaming ‘no’ at me, then I go all in. I feel the fear and do it anyway, then use unsuccessful attempts as additional fuel to level up. There's fuel everywhere; you just need to know where to look inside of you.

Remember this. There is objective reality occurring, and there's our subjective experience of objective reality. It is often the latter that hinders progress, including damaging meta-emotions and meta-cognitions.