Choosing Fear or Choosing to Know?

Fearful, scary, afraid, frightening, terrifying... none of these words or their meanings make me feel good.

Happiness feels good, Fearful feels uncomfortable.
We like feeling good, we don’t like feeling uncomfortable.
We aim to be happy, we don’t seek to be afraid.

Happiness has the power to heal, Fear has the power to make sick. (Ask anyone with anxiety issues)

If ^ this is the case, and it seems to make sense, why do so many of us choose to feel fear?
We never let happiness stop us from doing something, and yet we let fear stop us all the time. Both are feelings. Both are feelings we can choose.
(I’m tempted to exclude people with anxiety issues, but I’m not going to hand out the ‘Get out of jail free’ card, and say I’m not talking to you as well… if you have anxiety issues keep reading, you might find some perspective that resonates somewhere inside you.)

Many of us don’t continually feel fear, we choose to run when it appears, and never deal with anything fearful.

Why would we want to deal with scary/fearful things? We might end up… … um… with… um…. … … What might we end up with if we deal with those scary things?

We might end up learning they aren’t scary?

No, I got it… we might end up feeling uncomfortable…. The thing we felt anyway by feeling afraid in the first place…. So, we might end up right where we started… but this time with the knowledge of: “See, it was a good thing I was afraid and uncomfortable, cause now I can continue to be afraid and uncomfortable… this time with PROOF I should have been feeling it all along!”

So, either…

1. You learn you don’t need to be afraid,

or

2. You learn you don’t feel any different… but you get to say “I was right”.

The thing is, you are far more likely to experience #1 than you are to experience #2.

Why is that?

Because of the nature of FEAR! Fear is wrong all the damn time! Fear tells you stupid shit, and it’s so convincing!! Fear and the Negative Committee in your head are such great friends, they gang up and stop you from believing anything outside of what they are telling you. They sound legit, they have a loud argument, and frankly, they are much easier to believe than they are to make quiet. So, often we just choose the easy option of believing them so they all high five one another and sit down smiling.

This means NOT being afraid has to be a conscious choice… ACTING on the choice, so you can experience the ‘thing’ not being scary.  The ‘acting on’ has to be a conscious step forward of ignoring the Negative Committee, and choosing to learn for yourself.
Why not learn for yourself what warrants fear and what doesn’t?
Seriously, why not?
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I have to throw in:

I totally believe in Me, Myself, and I…. ‘Natalie’ is how I refer to myself all the time, with my friends all finding my use of third-person silly.
I don’t TRY to do it, I just feel like there are many aspects to me. Parts I know well, parts I don’t, smart parts, ignorant parts, funny parts, confused parts, mature parts, immature parts; to just say “Me” or “I” feels so partial.
I tell you this because “the negative committee” is a very real thing to me, a part of me I regularly have to slap in the face and say “shut-up!”

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As I offer up this perspective am not saying I don’t feel fear. On the contrary, there is plenty of crap in my life appearing and looking fearful, what I am doing is learning #1 above. I keep choosing to educate myself on whether or not the fearful thing is worthy of fear, and I just keep learning it’s not.

I’m also working on NOT making assumptions, this goes hand in hand with fear because we assume things are fearful. Fear is not based in education, it’s based on assuming scariness, and believing what we assume.
Hence the saying: Don’t believe everything you think.

Life is all about choices, we choose our feelings. (I could write a whole post on that alone.) Why choose fear? Why decide “Oooooh, that’s scary….” and then swim in it?
I can’t think of a good reason........... not one!

Blah, Bleck, Ick, Yuk, Natalie doesn’t want to be feeling uncomfortable. She wants to feel happy.
Removing the uncomfortable feelings by facing fears, so they don’t exist, so I only feel happy… THAT is what I want to swim in.

It doesn’t matter what words you put with: Fearful, scary, afraid, frightening, terrifying.
“I’m frightened of rejection”, “I’m afraid to love again”, “I’m scared to grow up”, “I’m terrified I will fail” ________________and a million more.

If you catch yourself using these words, use that as the mark you need to educate yourself on that particular thing. Don’t assume you know what will happen, don’t choose to swim in discomfort, acknowledge you have a choice, slap or gag the Negative Committee, and learn for yourself what warrants fear and what doesn’t.

Because you know what happens then?
You get all those benefits of Happy.