Fear: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Fear is pretty much a built in emotion that is hardwired into everyone's brain. How we perceive it, I suppose is different depending on the experiences we've had in our lives. For the most part, fear is a very important psychological element. Good fear keeps us from standing to close to the edge of a cliff, diving into murky water, fear keeps us from getting into all kinds of dangerous situations. So when is fear bad? Fear gets out of hand when we (and I mean I here, but I'm thinking it pertains to a lot of people) let it take control and talk us out of things that are good for us. Fear can derail our plans of living a healthy lifestyle.



Now to be fair, it's not fear's fault. Fear thinks it's doing the right thing by us. It is protecting us from the emotional damage that might come from failing. It is protecting us from the physical damage that might come from doing a new exercise, or maybe from what it perceives to be the inevitable. Sometimes, we even cause our own fears from being afraid of being too happy. A friend had a post about this today. Having trouble feeling elated for long over a good weigh in, but not having any difficulty experiencing the negative feelings of giving into a craving days ago, and still feeling that emotion. 

I know that fear. It is a common enemy, but the enemy is me. The little voice in my head that says, "hey, who knows you better than I do? It's been 54 years, do you think I don't know what is going to happen? You know this can't last, right? Do you think I want you to be upset if you falter? Give up now, don't put yourself through that." Or when things have been going good, and this is even more the case for me, I don't have a problem feeling good about the positives, but when a little blip happens, like not losing anything when I've been doing everything right and have been losing well for weeks. My little voice starts up with "see, it was bound to happen. You know it. I know it. Just give it up and go eat a doughnut and be happy." Not... no, no, no... but there have been times in the past where I've given up. Especially when those little blips happen too often. 




That's the Ugly fear, the negative person that even the most cheerful optimist hides deep down inside. For me it's a weight issue, for someone else it might be a performance issue, a speaking in front of people issue, or any one of millions of personally ingrained issues. That fear has no useful purpose other than a perceived sense of safety. It's not real safety, and it only hurts us (me) in the long run. It stops me from trying, so today I am saying GO away little voice. You don't know me as well as you think you do. I am a lot stronger than that, and I'm not letting you convince me otherwise ever again.