Over the past year and a half, I’ve heard several courageous stories of people trading in their routine life for a different, more exciting one. Stories like leaving a career to cultivate a side hustle, leaving, or starting a new relationship, and moving away to follow a lifelong dream. Not long into a conversation do you hear about someone exercising their privilege to make a meaningful change.
If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that life is unpredictable, and death is real. This reality is highlighted in the news, social media, and chats with friends and family with such consistency that we’ve lost our stability. Under these circumstances, some have turned their ‘good things come to those that wait’ mindset to a ‘why put off tomorrow, what you can do today’ approach. Milestones for all ages have been accelerated, where ‘someday’ decisions are being made ‘now.’
It’s been one long stress related event where we respond by fighting, flighting, or freezing.
- Those fighting may be battling COVID or on the front lines, helping others with their battle.
- Those flighting may have left the life they had to discover something significantly different.
- Those freezing are just stuck.
Me, I’m freezing.
When the world was told to stay home in March of 2020, I listened. I buckled down, watched every show on every streaming service, tackled a couple home projects, and minus the occasional emotional breakdown, I enjoyed it. The mandatory stay at home orders felt like one big, continuous snow day and reminded me of when I felt safest as a kid because I thought that all the ‘bad guys’ stayed in from the snow too. During the height of the pandemic, my family and my work were home, we had food (and toilet paper) in the pantry; in other words, we were all inside safe and warm from the storm.
Fast forward to the end of 2021 and things are back to a ‘new normal’ with some restrictions, but for the most part we’re free to live our lives. Yet I struggle, frozen with fear. The safety of the four walls around me is crumbling and I worry about everyone and everything. COVID related worries and non-COVID related worries, it doesn’t matter, it’s everything. I forgot how to live.
So, one of my goals going into 2022 will be to tackle fear. I’ll be asking myself questions like, how do I overcome fear and live the life I want to live? And I already know part of the answer will be taken from the Nike advertising team – ‘Just Do It’.
I’ll need to conquer fear in order to live my life with intention. If I can’t do that immediately, then I’ll need to plan, write down the steps it will take, and then take one step at a time.
This pandemic has proved that ‘someday’ is a lie. LIVE your life, pursue your dreams, tomorrow is not promised, nothing is promised. Live the life you want to live!
Tell me this: How do you tackle your fears?
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
Perfect Dysfunction 
Truth, all of it.
Also, it takes baby steps to face fear head on. Good luck!
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Thank you!
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Fear is something that one cannot completely eradicate because it has new faces. I see fear as a teacher that test everyone on several levels. If you overcome one form it will create another scenario for you. I feel fearless until I am met with some new feeling, sensation or experience that seem to paralyse me. I am currently on a huge building project and the rising costs seem to scare me, I wonder if I will sail through. We will always feel fear as long as we live with the unpredictable. Despite fear we have to find a way not to be totally overwhelmed.
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Thank you for your insight, Soloman. I appreciate your comment and hope you sail through your building project. If we get overwhelmed, we need to stop and take a break, and then start to take small steps.
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