When Are You Going To Stop Living In Fear?

When are you going to get sick and tired of living in fear; of making decisions based on what you’re worried might or might not happen as a result?

When are you going to decide once and for all that you’ve had enough, and move on to living the life you long to live; would love to live and certainly dream of living but continually tell yourself is a life you simply can’t afford to live just now?

growing up the future seems so clear

As a child I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Being a lawyer also appealed, but I think it was mainly the idea of influencing people with my words that appealed. Of getting people to see things my way. Funny how that turned out 🙂

But anyway, the entrepreneur thing. I was convinced that the life of an entrepreneur would not only allow me financial freedom, but also personal and time freedom. That I’d be able to do whatever I want; become whoever I want. The very word ‘entrepreneur’ seems to summon up thoughts of excitement, of liberation from social norms, and, of course, of dashing men in top hats rushing around 1950’s style streets looking busy and important. Not sure if that last part is just me?!

So.

Somewhere along the way, in my mid-twenties, I realised I wasn’t living my dream. I was in fitness management, stuck at a desk being told what to do. I was overweight, my relationship wasn’t working, and I just felt – stuck. Exhausted. And certainly unhappy.

So I left.

I walked away from all of it, in one way or another, and over about an 18 month period. Call it a quarter life crisis, I guess, and one I didn’t handle especially well in certain areas.

losing hope

I still had the faith that my inherent skills and potential would ensure I became wildly successful at some point, but I was starting to get an inkling that perhaps it wasn’t going to just ‘happen’ as all my teachers had seemed to imply when it came to talking about my potential. I’m sure they were just recognising my natural abilities in academics, but I heard only praise and ‘you’ll go far’ type of stuff and either was never told, or never stopped to consider, that there might be more to success (and happiness) then academic abilities.

Matter of fact, I’m not entirely sure that happiness was something ever stressed in the learning environment as being important. It probably still isn’t, or at least not as important as getting good grades and working well in a team!

Call it my own naivety or the mere fact that I truly believed everything I’d been told as a child, but I sort of thought things will just work out for me.

So when I returned to working for myself after said quarter-life crises, I expected success. I expected to be the best. The problem was that I never really defined what that meant to me. And so I became the best at filling my books and being busy. I guess I was the most successful personal trainer I knew if you looked at things in those terms. But occasionally I would have thoughts of something more, like being known for being a fabulous motivational writer or speaker. The thoughts were fleeting, because I had no idea where to start or what I would even write or talk about.

And besides, who ever heard of being a successful entrepreneur by doing something creative? Business is about time management! About serving clients! Keeping records! Being extra-extra busy and important! Everybody knows that.

Don’t they?

stop living in fear

A realisation I’ve had in recent years, and one that seems to keep popping back into my head whenever I found myself caught up on the wheel of busy-busy again, is that so much of what I’ve done or avoided in my life has been driven by fear.

Tell me if any of these sound familiar?

• The fear of failing at new ventures or taking paths not yet trodden and getting lost
• The fear of not knowing where to start
• Fear of getting found out, at someone calling your bluff
• Fear of losing security of some kind – money, relationships, certain possessions
• Fear of getting what you want and not knowing what to do with it and therefore losing your sense of self as all you know how to be is the busy and stressed you who is never quite ‘there’

These are the sort of fears that will kill your passions off over time. Slowly, insidiously, but ever so surely. And all the while with you telling yourself that this is just how life is. The way it has to be. And that you’ll step out of fear and into something new when you have the time/money/motivation/knowledge.

Well, maybe we can’t escape fear.

I don’t know, what do you think? Perhaps it is just human nature to always see the negative possibilities, to imagine the challenges of something new or tricky rather than the benefits. If that’s so, then here’s something I think we should all be much more afraid of than any of the above –

The fear of looking back and wondering ‘what if I had just?’

Now. Personally, although that drives me, I’d rather NOT believe that fear has to be our biggest driver. They say that the opposite of fear is love, which I find interesting.

When I started this blog it was with a general goal to empower women. Initially I decided that Woman Incredible was labelled ‘for driven women who demand more’. I decided that this was too general and a few months in I changed it to ‘ fat loss, nutrition and motivation for driven women’. A few more months passed and I decided that this label didn’t really say what I really wanted to achieve which was  ‘a blog about being happy, healthy, lean and strong – for driven women’.

And now?

The more time that passes, the more I realise that I’m happiest (and seem to be at my best) when I don’t try to put labels on what I – or you – might need or want in order to be happy/successful/enough. It’s NOT about fat loss. It’s not about nutrition, or training, or motivation, or even being lean or strong. Because if you think about it, WHY do you want any of those things?

It’s because you want to feel a certain way, isn’t it?

And okay, okay, I guess I’m going to still have to put some kind of label on it in order to sum up what I feel ‘it’ is all about. To me, it’s about loving the life you live. Or living the life you love, whichever way you want to look at it 🙂

And given that love is the opposite of fear, perhaps it’s not such  great idea to driven ourselves with the fear of regret; of wondering ‘what if I had just’. And if you accept that, then it’s going to mean you also accept that you’re going to make a concerted effort to start being driven by love, by passion, by ‘joie de vivre’, which I personally think is the best way to sum it up.

And it’s definitely a journey. Don’t for a second imagine that I am fully ‘there’, nor do I think I ever really will be there. That’s why it’s so important to find a way to enjoy each moment, to live in the now and love what it is you DO in the now. Which means you either have to choose stuff you love or choose to love the stuff you have. Probably a little of both.

so again I’ll ask you –

When are you going to get sick and tired of living in fear; of making decisions based on what you’re worried might or might not happen as a result?

And when are you going to decide once and for all that you’ve had enough, and move on to living the life you long to live; would love to live and certainly dream of living but continually tell yourself is a life you simply can’t afford to live just now?

\