I remember some years ago realizing I was not doing something because I was afraid to try it.  I didn’t want to risk any negative consequences even though I knew it was absolutely essential to my mental health and well being to deal with the situation. I was afraid of change. I was afraid to speak up for myself.

Around that same time, a little voice started to make itself heard: are you making decisions based on fear?  Wow.  Did I really want to live a life where fear of the new or change kept me stuck in a place I didn’t want to be?

I went through all sorts of feelings – some were very old and actually dated back to being a small child trying to figure out how to act to not make my father angry. It was a challenging job for a kid – it was so easy to make him angry, and his reactions were rarely predictable.  It meant a lot of anxiety, waiting for the hammer to drop. I developed a skill set.  First was to not care if he loved me.  That meant sometimes I poked the crazy.  I took the consequences.   We all know how that thinking turns out.  There is a fundamental desire to feel loved, especially by your parents – so while I felt empowered in the moment, it took its toll over time.  You can’t life thinking I don’t care if anyone loves me. We want to be loved by SOME one.  Otherwise, it’s very lonely out there.

Fear is a powerful force. It’s actually one of our primary survival mechanisms. If we didn’t feel fear, we would walk up to the snarling, vicious dog and get bit.  If we couldn’t feel fear we would get into all kinds of bad situations.  It’s ironic then, that we didn’t feel fear when we popped a handful of pills a friend handed us saying, “These are cool.”  Shoot – I remember not even giving a moment’s thought to what might be in there and if it might be deadly to take them together.

The point is, fear should not be the primary feeling in making decisions in the normal course of life.  When you are sober and clear-headed, going back to primal fear as the determinant of your choices can really hold you back.  This is not to say one should be reckless, just be willing to, at times, take a leap of faith.

Maybe you’re afraid to tell your boyfriend you are miserable and want out of the relationship.  What if I never find someone else who loves me?  What if he flips out and we have a horrible scene that will make me sick to my stomach?  What if he says, “OK, I’m miserable too. I can’t stand to look at your face anymore,” and we end up feeling like the one abandoned?

Maybe you are afraid to take a new job opportunity.  Maybe the new job won’t work out?  Maybe they won’t like me?  My old job is secure. The new job will be foreign territory. I hate my current job, but at least I know they won’t fire me. I’m miserable, but I get a paycheck.

Maybe you are afraid to tell a friend you can’t spend time with her anymore because her drinking is making you uncomfortable.  Maybe you think a lot about drinking when you’re with her, and you think it’s really risky, but you feel like a jerk breaking away from her. You’ve been friends a long time. It’s putting your recovery at risk, but you are afraid she might hate you, or go over the edge, or tell your other mutual friends secrets about you that will embarrass you.

Fear isn’t a good feeling, and except in cases of survival, it is rarely a healthy thing to use as your primary motivator.  Of course, fear that you will drink again is a great motivator to get you away from bad things. That’s about survival.

It’s important to tease apart what is actually going on when fear seems to be ruling your decision.  Sometimes the risk is so well worth it, that you have to move through that fear and get to the other side.

You have to ask yourself, is fear your primary motivator in life? If it is your ruling planet, take that first leap of faith.  In most cases if you are making a good decision, you will learn that fear is natural, but it needn’t rule your life.

One of the challenges in recovery is moving forward without creating obstacles to stop progress. These are almost always mental obstacles: I can’t do that – I don’t have time – I don’t like that – Not my cup of tea – or the catch-all, there’ s nothing I can do about it.

I don’t know about you, but I have a natural resistance to change. That doesn’t mean I don’t change, it just means I need to really build up momentum to finally push through that wall of resistance.  It’s ironic really. I know I need change; I know change will make things better – yet that resistance still holds me back any time I need to make a major shift. Somehow the promise of something better with the change does not break down the wall immediately like you’d think it would.

I sometimes think it’s a bit of laziness, but then I’m a very productive person, hardly lazy.  Then I think it’s fear: what if the change doesn’t deliver what I expect?  But I’ve made some pretty fearless decisions in my life.  I think it might be more about comfort and familiarity:  it’s a feeling like walking into a room full of strangers and you aren’t sure they are going to accept you. The only way to walk into that room is to say: if they don’t accept me, I’ll at least know I need to find a different room – if I don’t try, I’ll never find the right room for me.

Today we heard about both Farrah Fawcett losing her long-time battle with cancer and Michael Jackson’s surprising sudden death. They were both far younger than the average age when people die, and it reminds me that life is unpredictable and life can be very short. How much time do we waste because we think we have plenty of breathing room?  Do we put off amends? Do we put off recovery altogether (I’ll get sober after the holidays…)?

Death is inevitable – I just attended my fourth funeral in two years. They seem to crop up on us eventually.  Sometimes it seems as if everyone is dying.  Is everyone really living?  Living is about more than going through your day as if it is a mirror of the day before. I think in recovery it’s important to truly embrace the gift of life – never take it for granted – I did so many things when I was out there that put my life at risk.  So I better be grateful for each day I have now and live each day as fully as possible.

I remember about it was about 10 years into sobriety that I finally said to myself: I don’t want to make decisions out of fear anymore. I want to make decisions based on wanting to get more from life.  In the past I wouldn’t make that phone call or talk to a certain person out of sometimes named, sometimes unnamed fears.  What if they laughed at me? What if they gave me a cold shoulder?  What if I failed? What if I tried that new job and they didn’t like me? Maybe I should stay in this job because at least I know they aren’t going to fire me. It’s safer that way.  That’s the kind of litany of fears that ruled my life.

Being fearless is pretty difficult. It’s normal to have some fears – and frankly, there are some healthy fears (if you aren’t afraid of being hit by a car you might not look before crossing the street). But I’m talking about the fears that paralyze your life and keep you from taking a chance. Fears that keep you in statis rather than change.  If I am choosing something that makes me miserable but its safe because I’m afraid the new thing might not work out, I’m stalling my life.