Dealing With Fear & Uncomfortable Feelings
This is what happens when we live life on the run.
About a year ago, I was asked to participate in my first Generation Women event, representing Team 50s. The theme was “Uh-Oh: Stories about Mistakes.”
As you prep for the show, you’re sent various marketing materials to promote the event through your channels, etc. Pretty standard stuff. Among the materials is a list of the other performers who will appear on stage with you and their bios.
As I started reading the bios, I saw there was a professional comedian, a children’s TV host, a clinical psychologist who’d written something like eight books, and Beth, the former head of the largest book club of our time.
WTF.
I realized I was waaaay out of my league here and wondered if my big mistake was agreeing to do this show.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know the night went great, and my story was even selected for the annual Best Of Show. (Yay!)
Fast-forward to right now. I’ve finished my first book and am sending it to early readers for review, which is terrifying for all the reasons things are sometimes terrifying—namely vulnerability.
But that’s ok - I got this.
Somewhere along the way, I thought, hey, why don’t I see if Beth might be willing to read this and give me some feedback? I mean, if anyone understands a good book, it should be her, right?
I reached out to Beth, we had a quick chat, and she agreed to read my work (again, Yay!).. I agreed to send her the manuscript that day, which I did, and then went on to live my life.
After a few weeks, I realized I hadn’t heard from Beth, so I reached out to make sure she’d received everything alright, etc.
She tells me she hasn’t received anything, so I re-sent it and hope she doesn’t think I’m a flake.
Now, it’s been a few days, and I still haven’t heard anything, so I’m wondering again if she received it. If she hasn’t, it will look like I don’t know how to send an email properly.
But I don’t want to bug her, so…
Back to our point.
The whole thing makes me anxious, and I’m feeling a lot of fear around it—it’s all very uncomfortable. I’m pushing all of that discomfort down and trying to ignore it. Carry on, as they say, and I’ve been running from my feelings about this for a few days now.
Living life on the run is paralyzing and causes a lot of anxiety. Uncomfortable feelings you try to avoid eventually catch up with you, some way, somehow.
I can feel the energy around this entire situation is not flowing because of the stories I’m telling myself and the things I’m running from.
This morning, it dawned on me that it was time to take some of my own advice and apply the tools of creative destruction to this very problem—these stories were no longer serving me.
How do I feel?
What do I need?
Who do I want to be in this moment?
Let’s dig into these:
How do I feel?
I feel scared. I’m scared that I’ll look foolish in the eyes of someone I’d like to impress. I’m scared of bothering her. I’m afraid I’ll look inadequate - because what if I am inadequate? I can feel this right in my chest, and there is a part of me that believes that if I allow this feeling to manifest fully, it might take me out completely.
My head knows it takes about 90 seconds to feel and release an emotion. But my body does not - my body’s first instinct is to push the discomfort away - to run from it.
What do I need?
I need to feel the feelings completely. I need to sit with myself in the muck of discomfort, wade through it, and turn over the stones that hold the stories that tell me I’m inadequate. Where did this come from? Can I remember the first time I felt this way?
Who do I want to be in this moment?
I want to be a person who feels self-assured and confident, who isn’t afraid of being vulnerable, and who is okay with falling short. A woman who might not like the idea of falling short but knows and understands that if she does, it’s not the end of herself or her career.
A person who can sit in her discomfort and still remain steady. I promise that moving your energy to the point where you want to be and focusing on it will help you get there.
Is there something in your life that could use a little creative destruction? Think about that for a bit, and let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ve got an email to send.
LYLAS -
S
Have you heard??
How to Blow Up Your Life is now a podcast. You can find it here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
In the latest episode, I sat down with my friend and colleague, Shannon Yonge, an intuitive master life coach who specializes in helping women in midlife reconnect with themselves.