Feel the Fear

I haven’t written anything for weeks. I have been burdened by discomfort. I have been worried that my writing isn’t good. I worry that no one will care. I have done anything else to not write. I am writing this to fight that fear and lean into my discomfort. I should stop starting every sentence with I.

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Marcus Aurelius – Meditations, Book 5.20.

This is often shortened to the obstacle is the way. So I have spent time trying to figure out why I am reluctant to put things out there. I hope my internal journey can help yours.

In my past life, I was a basketballer. It was lovely. There were rules. There was transparency. There was accountability. Sure, people cheated and many people broke the rules but everyone could play and everyone could see who was adding value and who wasn’t. i.e. who was good and who was not.

You had practices where you could test things over and over again. You could go one on one with the person trying to take your spot. It pays to win. More court time, more attention, more social status. It is very alluring for the adolescent male mind. I liked being good at basketball. This jumped a million fold when I got to the US where basketball was given way more social value than New Zealand.

When you would go and practice by yourself you would get direct feedback. You would shoot and know near instantly if it was short, long, left, or right. It went in or it didn’t. It was hard data. It was a binary world and it was easy to understand.

Now, living in the non-sports world, its all nebulous. There is little accountability, little transparency. You can’t go directly one on one with anyone. And because of this, fear is rampant, even though no one acknowledges it.

I think this ‘freedom’ makes me uncomfortable. It is no longer objective. The shot went in or it didn’t. Now it is subjective, and as someone who has grown up assigning value to external validation it has been a seismic shift in how I view the world.

Wherein success was defined by getting a good grade, or getting into a good school, or winning the game, success now needs to be about the effort and process, not the outcome. Before, the process was just as important but it was always driving towards a particular outcome. The trouble was that I worked well in that system so it came to define me.

I created my identity to be this athlete. Even after getting injured (years ago now, damn I am old) I still get asked what I play because I still look like an athlete and move more weight than most in the gym. So this has made it harder to shift this idea that I am an athlete.

Again, getting attention for my body and ability takes me back to my value system of being an athlete.

In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about making your identity around verbs not nouns. I am not an athlete. I am someone that likes challenges, that works hard, that problem solves. This way you can apply your identity to multiple environments.

In the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson, he has a similar idea. It is to give a fuck about your values and focus on the internal things you can control and give no fucks to external validation. This shifts my focus to honesty, integrity, kindness rather than how many views I get.

But this shift in identity is like a death. A death of my former self. It has been a slow linger death as I got injured 15 years ago and I still see myself as that silly kid with dreams of making the NBA.

And so my first step in forging this new identity is fighting that fear. The discomfort. The uncertainty. To travel inwards on the things I can control and head boldly into the obstacle to find my way to understand better who I am.

To write this blog post.