The Biting Taste of Fear ~ Can it Be Turned to Sweetness?

“Just flip yourself over. I’m right here, there’s nothing to fear,” I said to my niece as we sat in our kayaks on the pond.

“I know I’m safe. I know I can get out if I miss the roll, but I can’t make myself do it,” she said.

“I understand. It’s not normal to force yourself out of safety. It’s okay, take your time.”

“But I have to do it. It’s the only way to be free. I want to be able to do any rapid, and if I can’t get over my fear, and fail a bunch of times, I won’t be able to succeed. So why can’t I make myself do it?”

“Welcome to adulthood,” I said, “where you can rationalize your goals and end desires all you want, but fear will tell you not to do it. It’s those that walk through the fear that get the rewards.”

We sat for another hour, talking about life as we floated on the pond. I refused to push her past her comfort zone. It would always be her choice, especially because it was the beginning of the season and my roll wasn’t feeling all that stellar. I felt the same fear at that moment and wasn’t admitting it to her.

In my E2T 90 Day Letting Go Experiment, by the end of week two, I realized that all the stress I’d been feeling in life didn’t have to do with the situations I was in, but the fear that I’d never overcome them.

Whenever I went to execute plans to change situation X, Y, and now Z, I felt a tightness in my chest. I knew what I needed to do, or at least had a new plan, but fear froze me.

It was if I were standing on a bungee jumping ledge, knowing that I was safe and that I wanted to fly, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually jump because my mind only saw the disaster.

When it comes to my situations, there’d been so many failures. I’ve walked through my fear only to encounter more problems, but if I look within, I know that there’s a part of me that also fears success.

As I looked at my niece, trying to convince her to roll, I had to face the fact that I had the answers, but oftentimes I held myself back from the solutions because I was afraid of both success and failure.

If I was going to lead by example, and show this beautiful young woman what was possible, then I had to turn my fear to excitement.

I knocked myself over, flipped under the boat and rolled back up. Once done, I realized how much I love the feeling of rolling. There was a time when I flipped on purpose in surfing holes, but I’d lost that excitement because of a few bad experiences. My situation with kayaking fear had become so big that I left the sport I loved for many years because I couldn’t overcome the outcome I didn’t want.

The fear impulse in our brain is there to keep us safe, but when it goes on overload, constantly stopping us from outcomes that haven’t happened yet, we are denied a full life.

I’m trying for the Axel in figure skating. An elusive jump for a person who started skating as an adult. My coach told me that I had all the ingredients, the pot was on the stove, and now I just needed to cook it up. There’s nothing holding me back from this jump except me, and the momentary disbelief in myself and the fear that tells me I’m going to be injured.

I’ve fallen 500 times, and haven’t been hurt. I jump into the air on all my other jumps and land gracefully, not caring if I miss and fall, yet because this is a new jump my brain says, “NO!”

In this letting go experiment, can I also let go of fear? Can I see my fear as my parachute of woo hoo, here comes another chance to fly, to break past my comfort zone, to see what’s possible?

Or will I allow the fear to give me permission to stay safe, to not explore out beyond what I know?

“Just do it,” I said to my niece. “It’s much harder to think about doing something than it is to do it. Fall, fail, swim, miss the roll, and realize you’re okay in all of it.”

“Fine, but do you have to be so perfect at everything? Can’t you miss?”

“Trust me, I missed as many times as I’ve now rolled, not only in this sport, but in life.”

“No, you’re always so perfect.”

We sat and talked some more. I told her everything about situation X and Y, in a vulnerable way. “You’ve seen me fall and fail. You’ve seen me be afraid. Why do you think I’m perfect?”

“Because I’ve never seen you give up or give in to it.”

And there was the sweetness. For every failure, missed roll, moment of fear where I felt I could never make myself do it, I found a way through. I never quit.

She flipped over, missed the roll, and used my boat to rescue herself. Laughing she sat up, “Geez that really wasn’t a big deal. Why did it take me over an hour to do it?”

Sweet young one, it is what it is, and because you didn’t let fear stop you, your strength is that much more.