Create-A-Fear

I have just realized how easy it is to create fear...but how equally easy it CAN be to create yourself OUT of fear too. Some may call this an all-to-wordy paraphrase of "fake it 'till you make it" but I think I'm trying to say something a bit different.

Sometimes when you are self-effacing something (i.e. jargon-filled way of describing the "fake-it" scenario) you are merely (or astoundingly) managing to forget the fear or push it into the subconscious. I'm not a psychoanalysis expert but I don't see how self-effacing can be a good long term plan.

An example before I continue, so you are getting ready for a big job interview and feel nervous. You really can't prove your calm self confidence when you are so eye-twitchingly nervous - the two are rather contradictory. Fake-it-'till-you-you-make-it (self-effacing) would have you repeating confident phrases to yourself in the mirror or simply putting it out of your mind until the situation is over. Then you have your stellar un-nervous interview and try not to wonder to where all that negative nervous energy went. If you are truly successful at self-effacing you should never even consciously think about that interview-nervousness again. But that feels rather short term an likely to explode one day...
so I say Create-A-Fear... or rather create your way out of the fear - you invented it in the first place!

I think there are many thing to create that can eliminate fear but it depends on the situation. (*note: I'm not saying you should 'create' your way out of a healthy fear of, say, going swimming in an electrical storm. I only mean non-bodily harming fears...)

Identifying my own fear to be sharing my crazy ideas, I decided to create an ongoing opportunity when I could express some of them: Open mic nights. Then I created a format that felt genuine and fun and armed myself with these crazy idea poems. I have already (in four months) gone from a shaky hand signing up to read to the name being down before I knew I had anything to say.

So where am I going with this you say? Ha, I dunno... but it sure was a wonderful feeling today when I realized I was no longer afraid.