From Raptitude: Why Your Fears Won't Come True

I'm suddenly realising that fear has characterised my life more than I thought it had.  Why do I procrastinate making that call or doing that chore or planning that meeting?  As I was coming to this notion, it was my good fortune to read a wonderful antidote from the blog Raptitude.  Here's a snippet.  But you should read the entire post here. 

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What you fear can’t really happen

What I’ve come to realize is that all my fears of the future are actually fears of the past.  

Each of us has a whole bank of awful moments in our memories, each of which are so painful that we can’t accept that we could experience the same pain again.  

If the thought of something you want to do rouses fear in you, think: what is the experience — the feeling — I’m actually fearing here? You don’t have to psychoanalyze yourself and try to figure out the childhood memory it comes from, but it doesn’t take much thought to identify the precise experience you can’t bear to risk happening.

By obeying our fears from arm’s length, we end up cordoning off enormous areas of possibility. Life is inescapably risky and painful, not to mention 100% fatal. So don’t think you can dodge pain, awkwardness or by backing down from something a bit scary.

The real bad stuff isn’t going to be something you had the foresight to worry about anyway. From Baz Luhrmann’s famous speech: “The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”

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