Thinking Fearless Thoughts

I've been mulling around thoughts on fear and fearlessness for quite a while now as, with all the wedding preparations and other life events, it took me a bit longer than I expected to finish reading Arianna Huffington's On Becoming Fearless ...in Love, Work, and Life.  Even once I'd finished it, I kept thinking about what I had read, trying to reflect on fear's role in my life and, more crucially, how to overcome it.  

Ms. Huffington divides her book into chapters surrounding the concept of fearlessness in different areas of life such as money, parenting, and illness.  Some of them applied to my life more clearly than others, but I definitely learned some valuable lessons from each topic.  So, here comes my collage of thoughts inspired by her musings:

• Body: We all have anxieties concerning our bodies.  A few secrets on looking good that go beyond eating healthily and excercising include getting enough sleep, helping others, and self-confidence.  These three things can improve the way we look to others and ourselves.  My latest thought on body image is this: we're not perfect and we'll always strive to improve, so, for every action that you take to improve your body, think of something you love about your body. 
• Love: The fears of loneliness and rejection point to the way we feel about our shortcomings.  In some way many of us feel that if we have someone there loving us that it means that we are good enough and that boosts our self-esteem; it's a sign of approval.  The thing is, what attracts someone more than anything else (in a healthy relationship) is our sense of confidence in ourselves.  So, what do we need the most?  We need to relax and see who we are and love and approve of who we are so that we can be ourselves.  Then, love can flourish in a healthy way and be sustained.  On the other side of the love coin, we sometimes experience a good fear, the kind that points out red flags when something is wrong.  That is the fear that we need to listen to.  The thing is that, if we've been listening to the first kind of fear about acceptance and approval, that one will drown out the other fear if it is there, and we can end up staying in an unhealthy relationship.  The third kind of "love fear" that we encounter is that fear after a relationship has ended.  How do we pick up the pieces of our life that now has a big hole torn right out of it and move on, and how do we trust enough to allow anyone to form part of our life again?  That's just a choice that we have to make, along with a commitment to keeping our heart open and not allowing what was not right for us to prevent us from embracing what is.  Finally, there is what you find in real love and it is about knowing that person and allowing them to know you intimately, in a way that goes beyond what anyone else is allowed to see.  You recognize it when you find that you like who you are becoming with that person.  As Ms. Huffington puts it: "in the end, it's all about finding your best self, not losing yourself in another."
• Parenting: I don't have any children yet, so this chapter contains a lot of things that I can only imagine rather than identify with.  Mostly, it pointed out how much responsibility you take on through parenthood and, how many fears that responsibility brings with it.  Kids don't come with an instruction manual and, to make things even more challenging, each child is a completely unique little human being that will react in his or her own way to their experiences.  That means that if you have more than one child, even if they did come with instruction manuals, each one would require different things from you.  Ms. Huffington writes, "courage is the knowledge of what is not to be feared," which applies as much to parenting as anything else in life.  Parenthood magnifies the importance of each decision one makes, and parents' biggest fear seems to be making the wrong decision in raising or caring for their children.  The things that I hope I will remember from this chapter when I have my own children is that a parent teaches her child more through the way she lives than anything she teaches her, and that uncertainty and imperfection are guaranteed to be part of parenthood, so it's futile to expect oneself to rise above them.  The one thing I learned from my mother and grandmother that I think I knew before I read it in this book is to love your child unconditionally. 
• Career: A woman's career seems just as fraught with danger as a mine field these days.  We are smart and knowledgeable, yet that societal requirement we have to be nice and get along can hold us back in our work environments.  If we gather the courage to behave with more assertiveness and ambition we can be perceived as being arrogant and pushy.  So, we're either left behind as men, who are expected to be confident and ambitious, climb their way higher, or we somehow work our way up, but sacrifice social connections and workplace rapport in the process.  Everyone knows that it is lonely at the top, but for women trying to go somewhere with their careers, it can be lonely at every level.  Beyond that, we fear failure, so we don't take risks, and we fear that success comes with a price, sacrifices in our personal lives that as women we are hesitant or unwilling to accept.  We want it all, but we know that you can't have your cake and eat it too, so, what do we do?  Add to that the fears of criticism (which tells us we're not perfect) and the workaholism that many of us fall into to compensate for our perceived shortcomings, and the workplace can be quite daunting.  How are we supposed to have a fulfilling personal life while getting what we want out of our careers while getting along with everyone, and making our voice heard? 
• Know who you are and be yourself.
• Be assertive but keep a sense of humor.
• Not everyone can like you, know that if someone is criticizing you, you are probably doing something right.
• Think of the cost of failure versus the cost of not doing anything in the first place.  You might be upset if you fail, but you'll know that you took on something big and that you can do that again.  
• Focus on the goal rather than the fear.
• Just keep moving... and watch as the momentum makes the obstacles disappear.  
• Recognize your value and negotiate for what you deserve.
• Where there is fear there is an important challenge and, with that, comes the opportunity for growth.  Learn to embrace the fear and use it to drive your energy and effort.
• There is no success without risk and no risk without fear.  You must embrace the fear to meet success.
•  Money: This touchy subject connects to so many different parts of our lives, not out of choice, but because of the way the world works.  We do, however, get to choose how tight a hold of us we allow it to have and what our attitude towards it will be.  First think of what is important to you in life.  Chances are, you will be happier pursuing a career that you love that pays less than a career that you dislike that pays much more.  Then, think of what you really need.  Our society prizes possessions and money power, but is that what you prize?  I always said that I'd rather have a job that I enjoyed that also allowed me to enjoy my personal life than a job that required me to work crazy hours in order to make enough money to buy a yacht that I would never have the time off to enjoy.  This is where it gets personal.  What is the most important to you?  On a business note, if you are raising money, remember that you are offering people an opportunity to take part in something worthy, so do not view yourself as a beggar asking for a hand-out.  Finally, if you give a little of what you have to someone that has less, you will always plainly see how much you are blessed to have (remember that in the Happiness Project the author discovered that statistically, people who give to charity actually make more money).
• Aging and illness: Some societies view the elderly as the wise ones to be revered, or at least respected.  In our society today, unfortunately, we fear growing in years as we see the health of our bodies decline, feel the capacity of our brains to keep up with the new technologies slowing down, and ultimately fear being relegated to some obscure corner of society as something inconvenient and useless.  Maybe this viewpoint lies on the more pessimistic side of the spectrum, but those are views, or at least fears, that people have.  Aging cannot be prevented, but how we approach it is completely in our control.  Take care of your body and your spirit; let go of things that are not good for you physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually; continue to DREAM; don't let the critics get you down when you do something, the important thing is that you are doing something; ignore the past and the mirror and focus on the possibilities that lie ahead; find some older women who are doing it right to look up to and learn from; embrace simplicity; find peace.  
• God/death: Ms. Huffington's chapter on being fearless about God and about death was very interesting to read.  In our American culture we collectively avoid these topics.  We avoid talking about death because it is uncomfortable to face and we avoid the topic of God because we have allowed those that don't believe in God to convince us that we are somehow mistreating them or subjecting others to an unwanted concept if we speak of our beliefs.  We have come to a point where we try to be politically correct and indiscriminate towards those who don't believe by relegating our faith into the shadows of our personal life.  Ms. Huffington bravely approaches these two taboo topics and voices ideas that are bound to be found dated and "uncool" by many.  The ideas presented are rather difficult to introduce succinctly, so I’ll just include a few quotes from the chapter that caught my eye the most:
• “Reintegrating the spiritual and the everyday is the key to fearlessness.  But ending this division is not easy when we’ve stopped even acknowledging that we live caught between these two worlds.”
• “If you believe in a God who only judges and punishes, or if you believe that there is nothing but an accidental, indifferent universe, it’s going to be incredibly hard to move from fear to fearlessness because, after all, the essential characteristic of fearlessness is trust.  It’s the trust that there is meaning in our lives, even when our limited minds are unable to see it.”
• “The instinct for spirituality is hardwired in us.  This is our fourth instinct, the one beyond the instincts of survival, power, and sex.”
• “Ultimately, to reach fearlessness… we need to bring into our daily lives a grace beyond our minds and our emotions.  There is no better way to do this than with a daily practice.”
• “Once we recognize that even when we put everything we have into a project or a relationship, many factors beyond our control determine the outcome, a lot of the stress and fear evaporate.  And we can live in grace.”
• “Quiet time before the world starts spinning is crucial both to nourishing the soul and being effective in the world.”
• “When we look at our world from a higher point of view, all our fears are put into perspective and even our biggest problems become less intimidating.”
• “The ancient Romans used to carve MM on the bases of statues and on the trunks of trees.  The letters stand for Memento Mori: Remember Death.  This was not intended as a sign of morbidity but as a mental tool with which to overcome the fear of the unknown, a way to come to terms with life’s  only inevitability… Remembering death… can help us appreciate life to the fullest.”
• Leadership and speaking out: We have a responsibility in life not only to pay attention to our nation’s leaders and partake in our government, but even more importantly to be leaders ourselves and to speak out for what we believe in.  The first step is something that Ms. Huffington calls “fearless individualism,” through which we know who we are as individuals and feel comfortable and confident in our own skin.  Then you take that and live out who you are through your actions and words, and in such a way serve the world.  This is the kind of leadership that every person is called to.  You may be a leader among your friends, coworkers, or the members of your family; and if you are true to yourself, you will truly set an example for others around you.  It is time to review our idea of what leadership constitutes.  Leadership is more an internal force that comes from the depths of who you are and influences others than some external dictatorial force that you subject others to.  Now more than ever we need to know what we believe so that we can stand up and speak out for our ideals.  There will always be critics, but it is our right to speak our mind and we should not allow the fear of criticism to make us relinquish that right.  Whether you are called to lead your family, or lead through example like Mother Teresa, or vocally like Martin Luther King, Jr., each of us is called to a certain kind of leadership and, when we learn who we are and what we believe in, we can find what kind of leadership that will be and embrace it.
• Changing the world: It takes a lot of courage to stand up for things that need to be changed and people that need to be helped or defended but are ignored; however, the rewards of taking a stand can be incredible.   The reward can be anything from knowing that a child did not go hungry to looking back and realizing that women can now vote and make their voice heard thanks to one person’s actions.  And of course one person cannot change the world by herself, but it takes one person to inspire the few or the multitudes that do have the power to collectively create change.  We think of heroes as people who are distant from us, different and better, just as we view saints.  Both, however, are people just like we are, and we have the power to aspire for both heroism and sainthood.  Saints and heroes aren’t born perfect models of self-sacrificing care for others, but rather evolve into those roles one step at a time.  Each small step you take to help someone takes you one step closer to being part of that group of heroes and saints. 

In the end, it’s all about knowing yourself and listening to your true self.  Once you know who you are, you can be confident in that person and live your life fully and fearlessly.  Which, of course, leads me back to getting to know myself better. Uncertainty and insecurity are two vastly different things.  When we get to know ourselves intimately, we can let go of insecurity and accept the uncertainties that life comes with.  

I was speaking with my grandmother the other day and she asked me to think about my future in a different way.  She asked me to think of what I want other people to think of me or to see in me in the future.  I’ve always tried to think of it from my perspective because I don’t believe in doing things for others.  However, it’s difficult to think about who you are from your own perspective.  Sometimes it’s more like being in a funhouse with all the mirrors that look like you in a warped fashion than like going into the bathroom and just staring into the mirror there.  And then I realized that what you want others to view in you are the things that you want for yourself (unless you want them to see something out of a sense of necessity to fit in or compete with others).  Since I’m not really interested in becoming a version of anyone else or a product of my environment, I suppose that thinking about what I want others to see in me would be a good way to step out of my own perspective and still get to know more intimately who exactly I want to be.  Then I can step back into myself and examine what parts of that image are already parts of me and which are the things that are latent aspects of my being that just need some nurturing and coaxing to bring out more fully.  Then I can work towards growing into that person who I feel I already am inside and allow that person to reflect on the outside.  Then, comes fearlessness.