#290 – When did fear make you wiser, wealthier, healthier, or happier?

If you ask me, the answer is never.

Why, then, do I cling to "fear" as though it were the most reliable compass?

Because I'm wired like that––and so are you.

Our brain is a prediction system: it learns a pattern, and then expects to see it again when the context is similar.

This morning, considering a walk to the UPS store to drop something off, I realized I was "afraid."

Still recovering from my recent ankle skin surgery, walking the seven blocks seemed dangerous––what if I derailed the healing by walking despite the pain? Would the wound burst open and get infected? Would I damage my knee by walking with a stiff ankle?

Those were reasonable concerns and I was right to consider them. But why did I initially described them as "fear?"

My mind went back to 1986, when my parents blackmailed me into having one more eye surgery for my strabismus. The recovery protocol included daily Valium and a stark prohibition to read––I took to drawing instead.

In the follow-up visit, seeing that my eyes were as misaligned as before, the ophthalmologist asked me––did I follow her orders? More or less: I didn't read but also I didn't take the Valium, and I discovered drawing!

"What? Drawing strains your eyes too––and why didn't you take the Valium?" She blamed me for the surgery's flop. My parents were angry––all that money spent for nothing––and gave me the cold shoulder for a few days.

That was the pattern my brain was begging me to avoid. My parents are no longer here to give me the cold shoulder, but my husband has told me that if I want to heal well, I need to rest the foot. And so I was "fearing" that if I created another problem by not resting, he'd be mad at me and reject me.

But because I know where that's coming from (the Ego, that self-created entity living in my brain that thinks I need protection), I choose to reframe my thinking––otherwise, I'm back at 16.

It's not that I "fear" something will go wrong. It's that I listen to my body (as the dermatologist recommended) and follow the pain's orders––if it hurts, stop.

It's not a self-imposed limitation, as fear would be, but a wise and resonant way to make a decision.

That's the only way I can grow wiser, healthier, wealthier, or happier.

What fear can you reframe so that it doesn't limit your growth?

Love,

Carolina