That Thing We’re Afraid Of

Some mornings I wake up with my mind full of ideas that I want to share and write about.

After a 20-minute meditation, I banged away at the keyboard. Words erupted out of me like an Old Faithful Geyser—three hours later, I had written five new articles.

Despite my productivity, I knew what would happen next.

Still needing review, they’d sit on my desktop for days; invariably, that thing we’re afraid of begins to surface: for me, it comes in form of avoidance, which shields me from the possibility of falling short on performance.

This is where poker taught me the self-awareness to objectively approach a problem in order to determine its cause. Indeed, analyzing my own behavior and motives helped me understand and correct my weaknesses at the table.

A tactic that’s helped me in this process is before making any decisions, to pretend I’m giving myself advice and speak to myself in the third person. This creates that necessary space so I can see things objectively.

With that knowledge, I applied the same strategy to my own life, delving deeply into the problem of habitually half finishing my work.

Was I too lazy to finish editing an article?
Was I overwhelmed at the tediousness of the process?
Or was I afraid of how it would be received?

I ran through the list.

I’m many things, but lazy isn’t one, and while I do hate the meticulousness of publishing and promoting an article, I’ve come to terms with the intricacies of the publishing game.

The truth is that thing that I’m afraid of is the naked vulnerability of sharing ideas that are deeply important to me.

What if people judge me, or laugh at my ideas or don’t care about what I’m saying?
That thing we’re most afraid of is the very thing that we need to do the most

Nearly all of us have that idea, that pursuit or that business we feel deeply connected and drawn to. It’s the hardest to accomplish, since it’s what we care about the most. It’s our purpose.

Instead of facing that thing we’re most afraid of, we fill our time with mindless activities or alter our state-of-mind through substance abuse.

Anything to silence that inner voice compelling us to do that thing we’re most afraid of. Over time, it eats away at us; if you speak with 80-year olds, they’ll often tell you about their regrets.

Most regrets can be simplified to: I didn’t pursue that thing while I still had the time.

I believe this is one of life’s greatest challenges. To face our fears and actually do that thing we’re afraid of while we still can.

We all know that life is about the choices we make. And every day, I have a choice. I can file that half-finished blog into a folder or sit with that feeling of what it will mean if I have the courage to finish it and share it with the world.

So today I hit publish!

Alec ♠️