This morning, I was halfway through my meditation when it finally clicked. Not in a big, ah-ha way. More like a little sigh.
Yup. I’m scared.
I didn’t know that’s what it was at first. I thought it was just the news, the state of the world, other people’s incompetence making me feel so off. (Yup it’s such a judgy thought! Stay with me…)
But as I tracked my breath, I tuned into my personal signals that I’m overtired, overexposed, and under-resourced.
Why am I talking about fear when this season is supposed to be about hope and imagination? Because I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling scared too.
But here’s the thing. Hope doesn’t ask us to feel better first. It asks us to stay engaged. Hands-dirty hope is what happens when we refuse to give up our imagination — even when the world feels fractured, even when fear is loud.
Fear is tricky. When we’re in crisis and overwhelmed, it wears a lot of disguises. Today, I want to bring you in close to look at one way that fear frequently rears its head: the need for control.
Because in 25 years of coaching and teaching, I have never met a single human who doesn’t reach for this at least some of the time when they are feeling overwhelmed.
So let’s talk about how overwhelm cascades into fear and seeking control, how to turn to our fear with compassion before taking action, and finally, I’ll share a simple exercise that has been enormously helpful in redirecting the chaotic energy that gets kicked up when we are in a fear response.
If you’ve been looking for a hand in the dark, I hope you’ll keep listening.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
How too many inputs cause a chain reaction from chaos to fear to trying to exert control on something, anything
Why compassion and care for the part of us that is scared has to come before action
A simple exercise for parsing out where you can bring your energy to actually effect change
Why tending to your fear is necessary to maintain our capacity for nuanced thinking, empathy, and creative problem-solving