What would you do if you were not afraid?

What would you do if you were not afraid?

It’s such a seductive question, one you usually find on inspirational posters or bumper stickers. It conjures up all kinds of dreams of what our lives would look like if we could do anything we wanted.After all, the only thing that stands between you and the life that you want is, well, fear.

But, what if I told you that’s a wrong question to ask.

What this question implies is that in order for you to imagine the life of your dreams, there can be no place for fear. And if you are afraid, somehow you are doomed to never live up to your fullest potential.

Fear is among the most human of all emotions, and it does serve a purpose in our life. It alerts us to potential harm and helps us stay alive.

Painting our fears in a negative light, as this question does, sets us up with a contentious relationship with our fears (“Go away, you horrible fear!”) and ourselves (“What’s wrong with me? Why am I so afraid?”).

It’s not fear itself but this fraught relationship we have with fear that becomes the very thing that stops us from creating the life that we want.

Does that mean we should simply live with our fears, and not try and build courage? Not at all. Courage is one of my core values.

What I am saying is that we can build a healthier relationship with our fears, and one that is not so full of judgment. 

We can build the part of us that wants to feel brave without denying, suppressing or judging the part of us that is afraid.

What’s a mindful approach to building courage? It begins first and foremost with acceptance – accepting your fears as they are.

When you come from a place of acceptance, two things happen. 

First, when you don’t judge your fears as being inherently bad, you open yourself up to seeing the wisdom behind your fears.

Joseph Campbell’s work on the Hero’s Journey talks about the central role fear plays in every hero’s journey. It tells the hero what direction they should move in, because on the other side of fear lies the hero’s greatest growth.

Fear is one of the hero’s strongest allies. It’s saying to the hero, “You want to bravely meet your goals? You want transformation? Well then, go where your fear is taking you.” Because as Campbell says of every hero, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”

Second, when you don’t judge yourself for being afraid, you create a strong foundation for wholehearted living, which means embracing the full range of human emotions – the pleasant ones as well as the not so pleasant ones.

Instead of thinking in binary terms – I am either afraid or I am brave, you can make space for both and say, “Yes, I am afraid and that’s ok, because that does not in any way diminish my ability to also be brave at the same time.”

Let’s create a healthier relationship with our fears, and adopt a more mindful approach to building courage that begins not with judgment, but with acceptance.

Warmly,
Bhavna Toor
Chief Mindfulness Officer
Shenomics