Unfreezing Fear

Years ago, I was offered a job as an union organizer in Hawaii. The person doing the offering made his pitch and asked me, "Are you interested?"

Was I? I needed a job. I wanted to be an organizer. And Hawaii? Living on the islands should have been as enticing as a swim in a warm ocean at night.

Instead, I felt, deep in my stomach, afraid. “You can’t do this,” a voice screamed inside my head. “You can’t do this.” Even though the job was what I wanted, working so far away was scarier than a hundred horror movies.

Now, when presented with a career opportunity that scares me, I have learned to sleep on the possibility. But my twenty-eight-year-old self only knew fear, and flatly said no. I probably was not breathing.

I know there are millions of women who face the unknown like trapeze artists swing, high above us, from rope to rope. I am not one of them.

The Disguises of Fear

The fear block is huge. But fear is tricky. It will show up in other disguises like:

Procrastination
Confusion
Uncertainty
Judging yourself and others
Impatience
A “Why bother?” attitude
Playing the victim
“I’m not worth it anyway” feeling
Negativity of all sorts and persuasions

And sometimes fear is bold-faced, as it was for me when I was offered the job in Hawaii.

Maybe I was right to turn down that job. Maybe I was not ready to jump away from my support system then. For it is not the decision that I regret, but the takeover. When we are in fear’s grip, we don’t choose; fear decides and speaks for us, and it mostly says no.

Would you like to know a gentle way out?

One Antidote to Fear

Buddhists have a practice called “mindfulness.” It is a method of watching yourself from an observer’s vantage point. Let’s say you are talking on the telephone. If you were practicing mindfulness, most of your attention would be engaged in the conversation. But another tiny sliver would be watching you as you talk. This sliver would notice when you disengage from the conversation and wonder what’s for dinner. Notice when you wish the conversation were over but keep talking for politeness’ sake. Notice when enough is enough and you guide the conversation to a close.

This sliver is the inner self. Mindfulness is a practice of engaging the inner self in our everyday, ordinary life—and not just when we are tuning in. This is important because your inner self has the power to speed transformation and change and to whittle fear down to size.

Not Judging is the Hard Part

Mindfulness is the practice of noticing, but with one catch: noticing is done without judging. (“Sure, right,” you might be thinking. “Without judging? Without criticizing?”) In the above example, you would have no judgment that your mind wandered during the telephone conversation; no judgment that you did not bring the conversation to a close sooner; and no judgment that you ended the conversation when you did, even if the other person wanted to talk more.

We are all challenged to observe without judging, since our childhood judges now live inside of us (which could be why it feels so crowded at times). But the challenge is as rewarding as a luxurious vacation at your dream destination. By noticing—simply noticing—we come to accept who we are, warts and all. And with this acceptance, self-sabotaging behavior quietly falls away.