IS FEAR GOOD OR BAD?
Everyone has a fear and as it’s usually something we don’t want to experience ever again, we avoid it. Why is that? Whenever I look back at my short lived life, I see progress points only when I experienced fear or uncertainty about an event coming up in my life. If we stayed comfortable and played by the rules all of our life I doubt we would ever grow or even accomplish our goals
Fear is one of the key factors in being a creative. Your success is predicated on your ideas and originality with your work. For some reason though, I embrace fear in the creative world but get anxious about it in my personal life. Why is that? Isn’t fear a universal feeling in all facets of your life?
It’s really odd how the tables turn as you get older. I feel like as a teenager I feared about my creative life and was happy to “go with the flow” in my personal life. That flip happened I think after I moved to LA. I felt as if my creative career was on autopilot and I saw progress.
In my personal life though, I seem to have a blurry timeline of where I see myself in 1, 5 or 10 years from now. I know where I want to be in my career but I don’t know about myself. I’ve only been “Parker the creative” for 5 years but I’m been "Parker the human” for 23 years. Shouldn’t I have a grasp on my human life more?
I think this is where fear comes in and creates growth in my personal life. I’m blessed, like beyond blessed. I have a loving family who has been an incredible support system, I love what I do, I live in one of the most desired cities in the US… but I still have fear about my future. It’s something that pushed me to NYC this year. I let fear play in my favor and do something radical, move cross country out of my cozy LA life. Leaving behind a girlfriend, friends, comfort.
THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
We as humans are simple but so complex at the core. We want simple things in our life. Great relationships, great health, comfort, happiness. Yet, we try so many things and go in all directions to reach those things. It’s as if we have a roadmap that says “go straight” and we interpret that as “go anywhere but straight”. We see the easy tasks as things we must complicate. I don’t know where that stems from.
Starting next month I’ll be in the 3rd state and 7th apartment I’ve lived in since leaving Texas in 2014. My whole goal in life was to be happy and I look back and wonder, why the hell did I do all of this moving to find happiness. It has fulfilled me and I’m happy for the experience but why did my brain program this simple roadmap to happiness as a relocation mission all over the country.
I think the first reason is fear of the “simple life”. Graduating high school I didn’t understand the groups of kids who wanted to stay in their hometown to keep living the same life. I know life is short and fast, why would I live life that way. Fear of the mundane drove me out and into Chicago.
Fast forward 5 years and now fear has pushed me out of LA because I feel like life is moving so quick. I’m about to be 24 and I can’t wrap my head around that sometimes. I understand from someone twice my age that sounds silly but it’s that age where you start to lose that sense of freedom. You realize the world isn’t perfect and the adults you once looked up too as perfect role models are just as imperfect as you are. You finally get a grasp that the phrase “ignorance is bliss” was what got you through your teenage years.
GROWTH IS SPROUTED FROM FEAR
With everything in life though, we need to embrace fear and how it has shaped us into the people we are. Fear isn’t just something that should be avoided, it’s a signal that growth is coming near. It’s a feeling we should appreciate. Whether it’s positive or negative. How can we step into the unknown with fear if we don’t know what is waiting for us on the other side? There are still many things that generate fear in my life. Will I be happy at the end of this, will I make my parents proud, will I make a great dad for my kids, will my parents be alive to see me build a family? These are things I think about every day but from that fear comes growth in knowing that regardless of what happens, I’ll adjust and grow with the results of any of answers.
As long as you are aiming to be the best you can be, You manifest what you want in the future for yourself. I can’t control life events but I can decide what I can do to make the most of those fearful moments in life. The byproduct of this is growth. You are adapting with the cards you are given, you are not backing down. This is the hardest thing to believe because sometimes giving up is the answer we may wanna choose, or at least we think that. The idea that everything we do matters to the world is not realistic. We need to base our decisions and thoughts on ourselves and the immediate people around us, that’s all that matters. We are all that we are, that is it. The only thing we can do is embrace what we experience and turn water into lemonade when we can.
Fear is always there with us, it’s our job to adjust it in our favor