Whenever You Feel Afraid...

Like most things in life, the immediate gratification or most immediately satisfying way of dealing with my fears is to avoid whatever I am afraid of. I find that the problem with this way of dealing with fear is that the more I avoid something I am afraid of, the more my fear grows. And it not only grows in terms of the specific thing I was afraid of, it grows in terms of becoming more fearful about different things. It may start with driving in the snow, but it may grow to not driving when it's gray outside, for fear of snow.

Now, I am not saying that some things are not to be feared. Surely, parachute-jumping in one's sixties can cause a host of problems and going into a known-to-be dangerous neighborhood after midnight may be just plain asking-for-trouble. But, there are some common fears that some people rationalize with "I'm just a homebody" or "I can't drive on the highway, because it's just too crowded" or "I don't fly because it's such a drag."

These kind of leaving-home, trying something new and exciting experiences are necessary so as not to limit our lives. I know, I told you about flying to France; but what you may not know is that years ago I had a flying phobia so bad that if I even saw a plane in the sky, it would occur to me that someday I'd have to take one and I'd be paralyzed with fear for at least the rest of the day!

The way I got over that fear was this. I flew and I flew and I flew again, until I forgot that I was afraid to fly. I came to just look forward to getting to where I was going and then I also looked forward to coming back home to my work and my friends and my routine again. And the thing that made me do this thing that I was afraid of was this thought: Will I be happier stuck in one place or visiting different places; having different experiences? Clearly the answer was the second choice.

Once, I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail with some friends. Little did I know that hiking can bring you to some pretty steep places. One thing I don't like is steep places. When I got to a place that was high-up and pretty steep, I said: "I can't do this. I have to go back." But my friends said: "If you go back, you could get lost & it could really be dangerous, whereas if you climb with us--and we'll help you up--you have a far greater chance of having a good time and being safe. I took the second alternative, because knowing my sense of direction, I surely would have gotten lost in the woods and been waiting till well after dark for someone to find me--if they ever did.

When I did a radio show in New York, I was scared to death! "Oh no, this is the Bigtime; I'm not half good enough," I thought. What I found is that I did just fine. In fact my fear served to keep me focused and excited about doing the show. Not only was it on the air in New York City; it was "live"!

As I think about it, most of the things I was most afraid of turned out to be the most gratifying things I've done in my life: getting married, having children, even getting divorced (I mean, who isn't afraid to get divorced--but if a marriage isn't working, isn't that the better choice?), traveling, moving to a new place, learning something I didn't think I could possibly be good at (Like French!), meeting new people, dating again after so many years of being married. These examples can be fraught with anticipatory anxiety--yet, fear, once conquered, can bring the most growth-producing, most natural rush of pride and spur us on to take even more risks.

Try something new; something you have to push yourself a little to do; see if it doesn't feel wonderful to have accomplished this new thing, to get out of your comfort zone---especially now, at this
point in life. Perhaps our lives need to get larger and larger, now, rather than smaller and smaller as we get to be women or men "of a certain age."