The only thing to fear is fear itself

I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at my blog, and knowing I wanted to write, but I was trying to find a theme. Contemplating over the events of my life right now the theme quickly came to me.

Fear.

It keeps creeping up from my toes all the way through my system, upsetting my stomach on the way, and interrupting the thoughts in my brain. Fear. Its a nasty little thing isn't it? Fear of moving, fear of moving forward, fear of looking back. Fear of failure, fear of letting go. Fearful of the confidence I feel I lack to do the things I know I want to do.

I have a close friend who is a certified meditation teacher. We would travel around for AmeriCorps workshops last year and thus many conversations would come up on these long drives. I think last year I realized what an emotional person I am and the main emotion I feel most of the time is fear. Fear of my own emotions even hah. She would constantly remind me to acknowledge the fear. That fear likes to play its own movie out in our head where fear is the dramatic main character. She would remind me to acknowledge my fear (her starting a conversation with fear, "o hello fear! There you are." as I sat laughing at her.) She had this amazing capacity to strip away what was fearful about fear.

The more we avoid something, the more power we give to that emotion, person, situation, you name it. Its like saying, "don't think of pink elephants." Well after someone says that the only thing you are going to think about is pink elephants. I am trying to realize my fear more and more and the more it comes up every time I put myself out there to pursue my dreams. It is an interesting experience to acknowledge how fearful I am about making movement in my career and thus I know how important this path is to me and thus I keep pushing myself forward. We all may lack in confidence at one time or another, but fear should never hold us back from pushing ourselves to grow as human beings. Perseverance and resiliency. We all have it; its just a matter of tapping into our own inner strength.