Happy National Repeat Day!

Happy National Repeat Day!  I hope none of you are actually suffering through anyone taking this "special observance" too literally. But don't fault me if I sound like a broken record myself today because we are circling back around to our topic from yesterday.   But, first I want to make a correction. Yesterday I said "be an acorn". I was wrong. Acorns don't do anything. YOU need to do something.  Rather, be the squirrel. Squirrels are hardworking little creatures that know if they don't do the work to collect and bury the acorns today that they will be absolutely screwed at some point in the future. They have a goal and they don't let hawks, cars, and other perils stop them. They don't let fear get in their way.  Be the squirrel.   Naturally, as we know from Ice Age, squirrels have fairly simple single-focused minds (Be a squirrel, but don't be Scrat). We, the cognitively advanced beings that we are, have lots of things around us that junk up our headspace and throw us off track. It's not even 'shiny object syndrome' at this point and in our massively distracted modern world even goldfish aren't envious of our attention spans.   In many cases it doesn't even take one fell blow from fear itself to hold us back; rather our dreams die by a thousand tiny cuts of dings, buzzes, notifications, and alerts constantly pulling our eyes from the prize. Let's leave focus and distraction for another day though.   So how do you get to the place where fear doesn't stop you in your tracks? It's easy to just say "Don't be afraid" but we know that's not enough. Fear is a natural emotion that we often don't have much control over. So we need to do something more.   First, we need to recognize that it's ok to be afraid. Being afraid doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing. It's not bad to fear losing someone important to you. Part of the thrill of rollercoasters is the fear of the big drop. Fear is simply part of our lived experience. We might fear death but the dead don't fear anything.   The problem is that we more often than not we let the wrong things cause us to be afraid. Like looking stupid for asking a question in class or trying something new. If anyone says they haven't experienced either of those at some point I would have no problem calling them a liar or just think they skipped middle school somehow.  If you can see where I'm going with this, then you'll know what we need to do is shift what we are afraid of. Instead of letting fear hold us back we need to use fear to drive us forward. This shift can be as simple as turning that thing we are emotionally afraid around to instead be intellectually afraid of its converse.   For example, many people don't start exercising or eating right because they are afraid it won't work, that they won't lose the weight they hope to, that they will look bad at the gym, and (very importantly) that they will fail to follow through as they have many times before. These are emotional fears. Very understandable ones to be sure (I've felt these too) but these are just the animal instinct to run from anxiety and discomfort.  Instead, think about it for a bit and realize that what you should really be afraid of is not giving the health and wellness journey a shot and missing out on having a healthier body, suffering from poor health, not having the confidence in yourself that you can achieve your goals, being limited in the kinds of activities you can do, potentially not meeting new people at the gym or in those activities who could become great friends or even more.   When you can reframe the situation more intellectually than emotionally you can escape the fears that hold you back and tap into the fears that drive you forward. You may have seen this before but to put this shift more simply - F.E.AR. has two meanings: