Fear: the Block to Empowerment

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You can’t be afraid of something you understand and you can’t understand something you don’t ask questions about. 

I happen to be a very curious person. I want to know everything about everything. It’s not because I want to be smarter than other people or feel more powerful. It’s because I find comfort in having information that can help me make better choices in my life.

An informed decision is more powerful than just any decision. Why? Because you are able to better predict the outcome or the consequences of your choices. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to have more positive experiences in my life, or at least more positive than negative. Mistakes are key to learning because they provide information that teaches you context and results. You can then use that information to make different choices and discover whether or not your results improve your experience. 

For example, if you are learning to ride a bike and you decide to be cool and cross your hands to the opposite handle bar (yep a youthful indiscretion) and then wipe out, you quickly learn that is not a great experience. Along with your skinned elbow, you gather additional information about the consequences of such a decision. I didn’t try it again because even if I could do it without falling, it just felt awkward and not as cool as learning to ride without hanging onto the handlebars at all (yep I did learn that one)! 

Making an informed decision gives me confidence and I tend to see much more success than if I just wing it. I will also add here that I see this as different from choosing based on my intuition. Our intuition accesses energetic information rather than logical data from our physical world. Winging it to me is just deciding at random without thinking. The confidence I gain encourages me to continue making better and better decisions. I see better results, and end up feeling more joy and satisfaction. I also feel more empowered and capable of handling all of those situations that come up that are out of my control. My previous experience lets me know I can deal with adversity and challenge without fear. Even where fear is present, I see it as simply an emotion meant to protect me and I continue forward with the knowledge that whatever happens, life is working out for me.

When fear shows up, I ask “what is the worst that can happen?” When I answer, it is never as bad as where fear wants me to go. I can ask “is this a threat to my life?” The answer is almost always “No” - especially because I’m not an extreme risk taker, so I don’t find myself in situations that actually threaten my physical safety. However, sometimes fear wants to trick us into creating scenarios that pull on complex emotions, especially where we don’t have the information we need. In these cases, I just ask more questions. If I do get triggered and react, I notice my reaction and ask “what is it about this situation that has me responding in this way?” Usually, it is moral outrage or disgust at what is happening in the outside world because I can’t imagine how people could choose to do some of the things people choose to do. This is when I stop and take a breath or a beat. I step back from the situation and consider “what is the response this information is intended to create in people?” Often, it is meant to create an emotional reaction that stops people from asking more questions - like “is this really true?”, or “what are you asking me to believe and who benefits from that situation?”

Fear is a tool for influence and control that has been used in society since the beginning of time. It is a useful emotion for survival, but at this point in our society, we are not faced with any of the same risks to our personal safety as in our past. As a result, we can be convinced that we are at risk through vague suggestion. We have become so used to convenience and industrialization that we’ve lost the ability to understand the way our systems work. We have lost the ability to think critically for ourselves because the world delivers everything to us the moment we ask. This instant gratification raises our expectations for the world around us and we lose the ability to be patient and to experience the space between asking and receiving - a space that allows us to really appreciate what is coming.

Empowerment to me also means self-reliance. That doesn’t mean I feel I need to do everything myself. It simply means that I feel capable of choosing my experience and when the world presents something to me, I feel confident and capable of relying on my own judgement. I don’t feel pressured to take anything at face value because I’m aware that people act out of self-interest. Self-interest is natural and only becomes a bad thing when people don’t care if that self-interest harms others. I know how to be critical through effective questioning and I know myself well enough to feel confident when my opinion differs from others. I’m fine with the discomfort of disagreement. It actually often leads to interesting conversations and appreciation for different perspectives. 

My point is that we must learn to accept fear and know it for what it is. An emotion that can be useful to us, or that can be used against us. Either way, our empowerment hinges on our ability to be able to tell the difference.