The quiet fear shaping my decisions lately

Today, I almost let fear run my day. Not fear in a flashy, heart-thumbing, stress-sweating way – fear as in the quiet, dark undercurrent running beneath it all, that is barely noticeable.

I was snapping at my kid this morning, to get into the car faster than he was, because.. because what? He was having too much fun racing his little red toy car there? There was no apparent reason – we were not late for anything. I didn’t have to be anywhere at a certain time.

Having dropped him off at kinder garden, I was pondering what that was all about. Beneath the irritation, the urge to “get going”, was fear.

Fear of being behind. Fear of running out of time. Fear of not doing enough. Fear of doing something wrong. Fear of letting my systems and structures go. Fear of being unable to get “back on track”, if I cancelled today’s gym class. Fear of ignoring the to-do list. Fear of being perceived as lazy.  

If you want to understand how I got from "this is annoying" to "fear", I write about breaking down reflections from the Universe here: Mirrors and reflections from the Universe

With the Universe having impeccable timing – I don’t know why I keep getting surprised - just yesterday I posted a note on this

How many of your decisions are made from fear? And how many are made from trust? Not necessarily trust in others or the Universe or such.

But trust in yourself, to handle whatever comes after the decision

I swear, yesterday this felt completely unrelated to anything else in my life. But writing this I realized: Over the past few weeks, whenever I have taken the time to properly look beneath the surface of the story I am telling myself, fear has come up as a recurring theme. Fear in a vague, unspecific “hard to confront or do anything about”-way.

Okay, point taken, Universe. I wont structure today’s decisions around fear. Instead, I choose to trust. Trust that my intuition is right and that I need something else than getting into my lined-up to-do list today.

I went and sat in the morning sun with no external distractions (I did contemplate bringing my phone, because, you know, what if? It is literally 50 meters away, Iben, right there in the house. Just stop.). I sat there, letting go of my ideas for the day, my ideas of what I was meant to do or meant to accomplish. Giving myself permission to do nothing and stare off into space for the rest of the day if needed.

It turned out, that all I needed was 25 minutes, and I was much more at ease, having a few ideas pop up I was genuinely excited about. Old habits die hard – so I immediately thought about how I could structure this to become more efficient. That if I do this every single morning, I will be able to 1) Avoid the unpleasant feelings from earlier this morning and 2) Recreate this flow of creativity every single morning. Figuring out how I can be more efficient at relaxing and letting go. Yeah. Exactly. I know how it sounds. Here I was trying to squeeze my intuitive pull for today into a neat and structured box, and to force creativity to show up at a certain time and place. Old habits and all that.

I choose to trust that my intuition will guide me to the right things on other mornings too, whether it is this or something else.

Roughly around a year ago – while I was still in my corporate job – I read an essay by Justin Welsh ( Why I drink coffee at 10:47 AM on Thursdays. — Justin Welsh ) where he used the expression “corporate PTSD”.

“If you are going to walk away from corporate life, don’t recreate it in your own business” (…) Don’t enforce a mandatory 9-5 schedule on yourself. Don’t have guilt about taking breaks. And don’t ask permission to go enjoy your life”

Lately, I have been doing this to myself. Wrapping myself in mental chains from corporate life. Because of this quiet, dark undercurrent of fear. What if my business doesn’t make it? Will it be because I didn’t work hard enough? Because I didn’t sacrifice enough along the way? Because I had too much fun while building it? If I stop working at 1pm one day, I will tell myself I “can catch up in the evening”, even though there isn’t actually anything urgent to catch up on.

It looks and feels silly when I write it out like that, to let those thoughts and the narrative of struggle = reward, and sacrifice = worthiness, run my days. I am actively rewriting these subconscious beliefs, but they are still hiding in the depths. Old habits die hard.

Today I choose trust.