just do it

Sometimes I struggle with fears and insecurities, especially these days when faced with major career changes! But my fears and insecurities seem to have a bit of a personality disorder in that sometimes they are THERE, present and raging, and other times they are absolutely nowhere to be seen, and it's almost (almost) questionable whether they even exist. Bipolar fears maybe? Or maybe it's just the standard tendency of extremes that addicts often exhibit??? I'm sure.

So when I think about where my career might be headed, what I'm going to do with myself, how I'm going to pay the bills, sometimes I am filled with excitement and happiness - I can't wait to do this on my own, I can't wait to see where things go, I can't wait to get started, I'm just chomping at the bit to get going! And other times I wonder, what the f*&% am I doing?!?!?!?!?! RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!!!!! And on any given day, I never know which side of the coin I'm going to be on. Sometimes I don't even have to wait until tomorrow for it to change because within the hour it can flip three or four times.

Now I tend to be someone who REALLY likes to have the right answer before doing or trying anything. I can make myself CRAZY trying to figure out what the right way to do something is before making a single decision. And usually my first response to any dilemma is to start with research. When faced with fears this morning, I started with research -- perusing a few recovery blogs I'm familiar with and looking for some postings on fear. I read people say that they are powerless over their fears and that they have to wait for their higher power to remove them. The particularly good writings (in my opinion) go on to say that in the meantime, they take action contrary to those fears.

Another person talked about faith being the answer to fears. Faith ... usually a trigger-word for me because I'm prejudiced against it based on its association with religion. So I looked up the word - a good starting point when I'm trying to translate. The definitions that made the most sense to me were 1) confidence or trust in a person or thing, and 2) belief that is not based on proof.

So if faith is a solution to my fears, then having confidence or trust in a person or thing is a solution to my fears; believing something without proof is a solution to my fears. How can I have faith with regard to my career situation? I can have confidence in me. I can trust me. I can believe that I can do this even if I don't have proof of that. Easier said than done? Perhaps. But I can also take it a step further, if I find that belief without proof is not plausible at the moment. I can have confidence in or trust those resources that I have in place - there are people I can talk to, from whom I can receive help if I ask. Perhaps I need to have confidence in them - trust them - to get me through this? Or maybe I can have confidence in myself or trust myself that, even if it doesn't work out, I will still be O.K. - I will find something else to do if necessary?

Of course, the more I write about faith, the more I think that the part about taking action is the essential component to combating my fears. When people say that they need to wait for God to remove a character defect and in the meantime, take action contrary to that character defect, I always wonder whether it ever occurs to that person that maybe, just maybe, it is the taking of the action that removes the character defect rather than God - that asking God to remove it is actually a non-essential part of the equation, and that taking the contrary action is what actually makes a difference. Of course it doesn't really matter -- if it works for them, great, and if I've figured out a way to make it work for me, even better. It's my hall monitor that wants to tell the other person that they're doing it all wrong and that it is my interpretation that is right. Oh, that pesky little hall monitor! Doesn't it know that nobody ever wants to be friends with the hall monitor??? At least, not for the right reasons.

Regardless, I can believe in myself all I want, I can believe in those who can help me, or I can simply believe without proof that I can do it ... but until I take some action, any action, that is contrary to my fears, I am stuck! I suppose I could have faith to the point of removing my fears, but to me that sounds a little bit too much like "thinking my way into right action" rather than "acting my way into right thinking", which my experience shows generally doesn't work. Rarely, if ever, have I been able to think my way into right action. I've always had to act first, and then the feelings changed later. My disease, on the other hand, tends to think first with actions to follow.

So after all this writing about what I can do about my fear and how I can face it in a "recovery" kind of way, the thought occurs to me that perhaps I just need to admit what my fear is, identify ONE thing I can do that is contrary to that fear, and JUST DO IT.

Hmmm. Do you suppose Nike would pay me for that plug??? Probably not - it's not particularly inspiring.

Basic Life Skills. Just do it.

Kind of makes you want to go climb a fourteener, doesn't it? Yeah, I didn't think so. Me neither.