The Fear of Actualizing
El miedo a actualizarse
A student describes the emotional highs and lows of a high-stakes interview process, leading to a discussion about the fear of pursuing one's deepest callings and the discomfort inherent in developing one's full potential.
The Fear of Actualizing
A student describes the emotional highs and lows of a high-stakes interview process, leading to a discussion about the fear of pursuing one's deepest callings and the discomfort inherent in developing one's full potential.
It was really interesting to feel into. There were several rounds of interviews. During the earlier ones that went really well, I felt that adrenaline. I went for a run just to channel this energy of optimism and enthusiasm and excitement. It felt very rich to experience that, and then also to experience the heavy sense afterward. Not an overwhelming sense of failure, but it was fascinating to watch where my mind and my spirit go depending on what happens in this relatively high-stakes situation. And when you said there's a comfort in not developing yourself to your full potential, or however it was phrased...
Yes, exactly. To develop our potential is to face fear and pain and the unknown. That is uncomfortable.
It's so interesting, because actually cultivating ourselves and our abilities keeps us more safe.
It's true. It's the wiser approach. And there are obviously positive parts of the experience of developing our potential. Ultimately it's very positive. But in the process, think of the movie you brought up: Rocky Balboa. The process is not fun. He's getting up, running around town, enduring all that pain. Does he have a guarantee he's going to win at the end? No. Otherwise there's no reality to it. He doesn't know whether he's going to be completely destroyed.
Positive narratives and self-deception
To believe you're going to win and succeed is delusion. If you are approaching it from that perspective, you're not facing the reality of the uncertainty. And I'm not just talking about external uncertainty. It's really about what's true in us. At a deeper level, we know that we don't really know. I can tell myself, "I'm going to make it, it's going to happen, I'm the greatest," but we know we could fail. There's a part of us that knows the truth: there are no guarantees. Any narrative that tries to manage and cope with that by telling ourselves unreal stories is not going to be successful.
It does help, if I'm completely immersed in a narrative of "I can't, I can't, I can't," to get out with a positive narrative: "What if?" or "I can, I can." I can psych myself up. But that's only a temporary approach for balancing out a negative narrative. Similarly, if we're in a very delusional, grandiose narrative, we usually don't need to undo that ourselves. Life will do it for us.
From what you're saying, it sounds like if we were to really step to the edge of what we can do and train, maybe in boxing, as hard as we can, the act of doing that is the act of approaching the fear of no guarantees. Anything can happen. And the act of doing that is the act of facing the potential of fear and pain.
The potential and the fear are right there.
And yet going in that direction is actually more beneficial. We become fitter, more mentally and psychologically fit as well.
Actualization and deep desire
Yes, exactly. And if you're going in the direction of a true calling, a true desire, a deep desire, you start actualizing. There's something that happens at a very deep level, at the level of psyche, soul, body, which is harmony and health.
I want to highlight that this is different than waking up. It's a different thing, but it's very relevant and important. Don't have the idea that this process will eventually take us to that thing we talk about called waking up. It might make the journey or the process easier, but it's not what makes that happen. At the same time, it's very important and relevant.
My experience was that after one interview in particular that went badly, I was remembering other times in my life where I'd spun out a car and was in a dangerous situation, or just moments of consequential failure, and the kind of alertness that can bring about. I experienced a little bit of that. I felt like a lot of normal day-to-day patterns were evaporated.
Fear, clarity, and the danger of thrill-seeking
Yes, and you could come to that by facing fear consciously, because that's what happens in a moment of something extreme like a car accident. All of the fear we've been trying to avoid and cope with becomes very present. We move through it. We are momentarily not dedicated one hundred percent to avoiding it, and so all of the avoidance mechanisms drop, and we have moments of clarity.
This can happen. But you could approach it in a different way. Instead of thrill-seeking (which I'm not saying you do; it might not be your personality type), some people become daredevils or thrill seekers to get those moments of mental emptiness. But that's not a lasting approach. It's like a crutch.
If instead you see what you're most deeply afraid of, aside from death, you can face it directly. Instead of facing death by jumping off a plane (and there's nothing wrong with that), if you see there's something you're afraid of that is almost like, or even equal to, dying: those fears can come up that have to do with living abundantly, with living freely. And facing those fears consciously and directly is what transforms.
The fear of abundance and freedom being like the fear of being a boxing champion. The fear of what could happen if I go all the way.
The safer bet and the real calling
There's a fear of actualizing, a fear of success, a fear of things going well. But there's also something more specific. Imagine the thing I really want to do most is to be, say, a computer scientist, but I'm afraid of all the challenges. Because it's such a big deal if I fail, I choose something else instead, something like "technical media expert," something that's not the real thing. I go for something that's close but not it. That's an approach that minimizes everything, makes it simpler, makes it easier, but I'm not actually doing the thing I want to do. The thing I want to do is a lot bigger, a lot scarier. There's more at stake in every way, and it's harder to face. And as you mentioned, there's also the fear of getting what you want, of succeeding, of things going big, of expansion, of well-being, of joy. Sometimes we're so addicted to distress that moments of joy can be terrifying.
Yeah, there's also the fear of diverting all your time and energy in a direction that is risky.
By diverting you mean investing. Yes.
Because in the example you gave, being a technical media expert is a safer bet and already within one's skill set.
That is fine in that hypothetical situation, if I don't keep my eye away from the target. If I really want to do this other thing but I'm going to do the safer thing temporarily as a means to move forward because it's a safer bet, that's proper strategy. But if I tell myself I don't want that thing, that I really want this thing instead, it's going to haunt me.
Because then you're lying to yourself to avoid the pain.
You're avoiding something deep, a deep calling, hypothetically. What you brought up about diverting energy is real. There's a huge risk in investing time and energy to develop something that has no guarantees.
Which is not necessarily wise. It could be, but...
Listening deeply enough to know
The wisdom will be in whether I'm listening deeply enough. You don't know with certainty that a particular direction is the right one. But if we listen deeply enough, we are able to know what is not the direction. You recognize: that's not the direction. This thing keeps calling, and you explore it, and it keeps calling, and it keeps reconfirming. I'm not talking about some big vocation. It could be simple things. It could be anything.
It could be having a really stable job so I can have weekends to go to the mountains for hikes. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Because being in nature every weekend is like my heaven. And then I start doing that and my whole life makes sense. Everything starts to work out. I'm simplifying, but you get my point.
Or it could be something like, "I need to write," or "I need to compose music." It could be that kind of thing as well, but not necessarily. We don't all have those artistic, creative vocations.
What's in front of you right now
This is all about the big picture, but for you specifically, you're becoming a father. Maybe the best thing, the wisest thing, is to prioritize getting a good, stable job for some time. Maybe that's the biggest thing for you right now, and maybe that's the scariest thing and the most challenging thing. I don't know. You could tell me, but I can't tell you that.
Yeah, it feels like an important component of peace of mind right now.
There's a quote from my teacher: "The highest form of meditation is to do what we have to do." And to do it totally, in the moment.
That's good. I love that.