What better day to talk about fear than Halloween? Of course, this is the one day per year we allow superficial fear into our lives… The kind of fear that leaves you trembling and sometimes screaming at deathlike impersonations. It’s the holiday that allows us to seek out the adrenaline rush of pursuing these fears. We venture out to haunted houses and scare parks, we dress in costumes that mask our true identity, and we find an utter thrill in the the darkness of the day.
I repeat…
It’s the one day we seek out our fears.
So naturally, I’m here to ask why exactly we don’t do so more often, but on an even scarier level… with things that actually affect our lives.
Those who know me know that I absolutely hate Halloween and always have. As a kid, I was practically forced to go trick or treating, usually throwing on a cowboy hat and heading out the door with reluctance. I hated teen Halloween parties, costumes, and the idea that I’m supposed to consume loads of candy provided by strangers. Then I went to college and realized that for adults, Halloween was an excuse to dress up and get hammered drunk, not to mention females dressed very scantily.
SIGN. ME. UP.
No thanks.
Call me weird, or someone who has no fun… I don’t care. It’s who I am. As I get older, I give Halloween even more thought, and today I think I nailed it. I figured out the underlying reason why Halloween has never made sense to me:
Because it’s a day we seek out our fake fears. Fears that startle us for the thrill but leave us laughing. It’s a day we cover ourselves in the identity of someone or something else, so as to escape our reality. And while I’m an advocate of occasionally escaping reality, I wonder why it is we do so in such a superficial way so willingly, yet struggle with digging deep within us to uncover our real fears. The ones that keep us from moving forward in this one “wild and precious life.”
Today, I dig deep and reflect on the 4 most common fears I see in myself as well as in others:
1) Success
2) Change
3) Failure
4) Commitment
When listening to a podcast last week, the author interviewed said this quote multiple times: “Success and failure are not opposites. They are part of each other.”
I have found that so many are afraid to fail because they are also afraid to succeed. Sounds oxymoronic, but it’s true. They’re afraid of taking the risk in order to reap an amazing reward, all because of what people might say, whether or not they’re good enough, and so on. In other words, they allow failing to keep them status quo, thus never achieving success.
Also common is the affects of change on a person. I’ve seen it time and time again, where a person decides to make a change in their life and the change itself stirs controversy. It could be that their spouse sees them changing and doesn’t like being left behind, or that the person feels as though they’re constantly outside their comfort zone (the only true place for change). The simple act of changing, at times, can awaken a sense of fear in a person that causes them to fall backward. And sometimes it’s not even the act, but the simply thought of changing.
And of course, neither failure nor change nor success can happen if one hasn’t made a strong commitment. We see in movies how individuals are afraid to commit their life to another individual, for example. The same thing happens over and over again in all of us, in different ways. We fear the commitment, the ties that hold us to something, and we stall in committing.
This Halloween, I urge you to face your fears, and I don’t mean the fears you have of ghosts and zombies and haunted houses. Instead, do the uncomfortable thing and look inward. What is it that YOU fear most? Why do you fear it? And how is it holding you back?
Recognize that only you have the power to change and to succeed, but in order to do so, it takes a full commitment and a willingness to fail.
Putting on a mask is easy. Taking the mask off and living fully is quite hard. Do the hard thing. Seek out your real fears. Scare yourself. You might just find it’s not so scary after all.