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| Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash |
“Happiness is
achieved by flowing with the known and the unknown within you, being in a state
of simplified simplicity.”
—Pablo Andres
Wunderlich Padilla
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider myself brave. My
first reaction is to shrink back rather than charge forward. “I am afraid” is one of the limiting beliefs I’ve been doing battle with all my
life. And while I’ve found work-arounds for times when I need to push through
feeling fearful, I’ve never actually thought about fear in a positive way.
Until last week.
Last week I picked up a pretty and deceptively simple little
book, My Friend Fear: Finding Magic in the Unknown (2018,
TarcherPerigee), by Meera Lee Patel. Just like reading The Upside of Stress
changed my attitude towards stress, reading My Friend Fear triggered a
change in my attitude toward fear by helping me see it in a new way.
Some tidbits:
“Fear is a friend, and it’s here to support you. Like all friendships, the one you have with fear is a two-way street. It requires time, hard work, and honesty in order to become and remain healthy. It requires us to sit with it, listen to it, and try our best to understand it—even though we don’t always know how. Like any friend, fear can help you only if you let it.”
“Becoming aware of fear is the first step to befriending it. After all, how can you become friends with something you’re pretending doesn’t exist?”
“It’s okay to be afraid. All it means is that there’s something you care deeply about. It’s okay to have fears, as long as you are willing to explore them. It’s okay to hug fear closely, to poke and prod and discover what’s underneath that heavy, dark cloak.”
“Fear is here to help you uncover your greatest wish.”
As I was finishing up My Friend Fear, I picked up my copy of
Susan Jeffers’ classic Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. After a quick skim, I realized these two books worked
together to help something click in my mind. (Don’t you just love when that
happens?)
Here are my epiphanies:
- Fear will always be there when you step outside your comfort zone. All learning and growth occurs outside of your comfort zone, so unless you want to stop growing, you will always have some fear.
- The only way to get over being afraid of doing something is to do it.
- The doing comes first, then the fear fades.
- Everyone feels this way—I’m not an anomaly.
- Fear is my friend. It shows me what matters to me.
My tendency has always been to think something was wrong
with me when I felt fear, and to push it away instead of listening to it. Or
I’d become paralyzed and overwhelmed—the antithesis of flow.
After reading these two books, I’m changing my response to
fear. Instead of trying to “overcome” fear, I want to learn how to be comfortable
with it, and with being afraid. I’m no longer going to feel like I shouldn’t be afraid, or
that I should just ignore fear and push ahead. I’ll be looking on fear as the
friend who highlights the areas of my life that matter the most, the areas where
I’m stretching outside my comfort zone. 2018 is already giving me opportunities
to test this theory, with new writing projects on the horizon, the chance to
help teach a yoga and journaling workshop this weekend, and, in October, a
chance to travel to Paris with Laure Ferlita and The Blue Walk.
Do you welcome fear into your life? What would you do if fear were your friend?
Introduction by Ted Kooser: This is the sixth poem we've published by Peter Everwine, which testifies to how much I admire his writing. How fine it is when a memory arrives from the past to surprise us into happiness. Everwine lives in California, and his most recent book is Listening Long and Late from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The Day
We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog,
still young then, running ahead of us.
Few people. Gulls. A flock of pelicans
circled beyond the swells, then closed
their wings and dropped head-long
into the dazzle of light and sea. You clapped
your hands; the day grew brilliant.
Later we sat at a small table
with wine and food that tasted of the sea.
A perfect day, we said to one another,
so that even when the day ended
and the lights of houses among the hills
came on like a scattering of embers,
we watched it leave without regret.
That night, easing myself toward sleep,
I thought how blindly we stumble ahead
with such hope, a light flares briefly—Ah, Happiness!
then we turn and go on our way again.
But happiness, too, goes on its way,
and years from where we were, I lie awake
in the dark and suddenly it returns—
that day by the sea, that happiness,
though it is not the same happiness,
not the same darkness.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2016 by Peter Everwine, “The Day,” from New Letters, (Vol 83,
no. 1, 2016-17). Poem reprinted by permission of Peter Everwine and the
publisher. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The
introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not
accept unsolicited manuscripts.
One day in December I was cleaning out our pantry while
listening to Marie Forleo interview Tim Ferriss. Something Tim said struck me
as I stood in my kitchen, clutching cans of black beans and tuna:
“What would it look like if it was easy?”
I realized I’m not used to expecting things to come easily.
I’m used to expecting to work hard, to struggle, to sweat, to grind it out.
What is this concept “easy” of which you speak?!
Because even when “it” is easy, I find a way to make it
hard.
It’s my superpower.
I grasp, I cling, I obsess, I worry, I engage in
procrastination and perfectionism and many other unhelpful habits.
And you know what, I’m tired. I’m tired of struggling, of
swimming upstream, of overwhelming myself in “shoulds” and over-analyzing and
over-researching and over- everything.
I’m “over” it.
I realized, standing in my kitchen, listening to Tim and
Marie talk, that I want my life and work to flow. And just like that, my
2018 Word of the Year (WOTY) presented itself to me.
My words of the year have often appeared this way, without
my having to dig around in my subconscious. A word pops into my head or keeps
showing up in what I’m reading and seeing in a fashion impossible to ignore.
I’ll roll it around in my brain, noticing how it makes me feel. Is it a word
that can apply to multiple areas of my life? Is it a stretch, but not so far
outside my comfort zone that I’ll feel constantly intimidated by it? Does it
have layers of meaning? Do I get excited at the possibility of having it guide
me during the upcoming year? Flow fit the bill for 2018.
It’s always fun seeing the ways my WOTY pops up throughout
the year, whether it’s in art, music, or words. I’ve already stumbled on
several passages that connect to the concept of flow in my mind. Here’s one
paraphrased from the novel The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles:
“Life is like a dance partner, and if you relax and let
yourself go, you’ll find yourself waltzing.”
Doesn’t that sound lovely?
So in 2018, I plan to focus on putting aside things that
impede flow, such as fear and perfectionism. I’m going to take up habits and
practices that lead to flow, such as Morning Pages, and remembering to take a
few moments to plan out my day so that things will run more smoothly. I’m also
going to focus on not over-scheduling, because that leads to rushing, and rushing
is not flow.
Working with a Word of the Year is a gentle way to set a
tone, intention, or expectation for the coming year. It can be as simple or as
in depth as you like. In my experience, it can be a useful tool in advancing
your goals and enriching your life.
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| Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
“Every piece of the universe, even the tiniest snow crystal, matters somehow. I have a place in the pattern, and so do you.”
—T.A. Barron |
