For the past couple weeks I've been slowly making my way through one of the most impactful books I've ever opened. The author is Akshay Nanavati, a veteran of the Marines who struggled with alcoholism and depression before later becoming known for his ability to face every one of his fears he encountered, whether that be ultramarathons, skydiving, or public speaking. The book is called "Fearvana", and so far the main theme has simply been to establish your fears for your current and future self, and then to painstakingly examine what's causing the fears and how to move past them.
We all suffer from fear to some degree. Whether it's quitting your job to pursue your passion, making the first move on a love interest, or bungee jumping, no human is without the voice in their head telling them it's too daunting, won't work, or could result in failure/embarrassment.
So how do we silence the voice?
From what I've learned in the book, it all comes down to examining. Dissecting each fear as deeply as possible, which means getting to the root cause of why we're afraid.
This is not easy work, and it opens up some painful revelations about who we are and our desires for ourselves and how the world perceives us. Your root causes may be completely different than mine, but everyone's stem from some part of us that's afraid of the worst happening. This is exactly where the next step of the examination comes into play: identifying the worst-case scenarios if our fears came true. More often than not, my fears were motivated by an assumption that I would be perceived differently by those around me, and as we all know right now, social isolation can be a scary thing to consider. Wasted time/energy seemed to be another common theme, though again, there's no wrong answer.
Thankfully, the exercise wasn't all negatives: the next part was to list the possible positive outcomes that could come from confronting your fears and chasing your dreams. This was powerful. Putting it on paper and seeing the things I could accomplish and what life would be like if I did was something I'd never done before, and it really was like bringing nirvana to life.
After listing the potential goodness that could come from pursuing what you really want, your job was to compare those with the worst-case scenarios. For me, the possible happiness/fulfillment FAR outweighed any of the fears I had previously listed, and made me ponder why on earth I wouldn't immediately start living a life that was more in-tune with who I really wanted to be. And I'm only just getting started with the book.
If you have the time this weekend, try and run yourself through this exercise. It took about a half hour for me, but the return on investment will surely dwarf any amount of time spent. Easily the most powerful thought experiment I've ever done. Fear is normal. But so is letting it dictate our lives. My hope is that you'll prove to yourself you have the power to overcome whatever it is that's stopping you from living the life you want. The clock is ticking.
"A Single Seed" is my attempt to get out one idea every day that I've learned or accumulated over the years, with the hope that it may stick in someone else's memory bank as well. The idea may be related to fitness, business, life, or philosophy, but I think you'll find that many can change domains if you wish them to. With each seed planted, a new life awaits.
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/skydive-skydiving-parachute-sky-101771/
