Fear Is a Thief

Have you ever been afraid?

I do not like horror movies. All of my friends could tell you this. In fact, one of my friends has been steadily grooming me to watch a “thriller” and it may happen but I will likely scream like a baby. Fear has always played a part of my life. I do not like jump scares, I do not like the unknown, I do not like being out of control of my destiny.

However if 2020 taught me anything is that we have very little control over anything.

Yet it revealed something else.

It revealed we have a lot of control over ourselves.

Everyday you and I go to work, we go to school, we go to wherever we are suppose to be and do tasks to provide a life for ourselves and our families.

Everyday we do these things, sometimes with fervor, sometimes half heartedly, sometimes with a not much thought at all. We just go through the motions and actions mindlessly.

“Hey, I am just doing what I have to do to get by.” While simultaneously seeing someone on the street in a nicer car prompting you to say “must be nice.”

The heart of how we respond to situations, people, responsibility, personal moral questions and professional requirements reveals a lot of how we make decisions.

We mostly make decisions about our survival.

Notice I didn’t say about our life, about our dreams, our goals, our hopes and future. No, no, our survival.

Humans are made to survive. Our brains are wired for negativity. 90% of our thoughts are negative 85% repeating.

We are built to survive.

Fear drives this narrative in us. It keeps us held down to a substandard of living.

Sometimes that substandard of living comes with a very big house, “must be nice” cars and all the boxes checked of an American dream.

Sometimes that substandard of living comes with a beat up chevy cavalier, student debt and a job at local kangaroo Gas Station. (If you do not know that kangaroo, you probably have never been to Warner University in Lake Wales Fl.)

Sometimes it is the in-between with some boxes checked but a lot of striving leaving a big empty hole in your heart where purpose would live but you have none.

Fear is a thief and a liar. It is also a tool.

If the tool is used incorrectly it makes us a fool. If it is used reasonably it gives us Experience and perspective.

The problem with fear is that it never considers the current situation a failure. It always considers the possibilities as failures.

It looks to the possibilities of less money but more fulfillment as failure.

It looks to the possibilities of others outcomes tied to our decision as our failures not their own.

It looks to the possibilities of taking a well calculated risk as to great and certain failure.

My personal favorite…

It says, you have tried before and failed. Who do you think you are. You worthless, no good example of a human.

It gives a lot of problems and no solutions.

When I married my best friend the first words I said in our vows was this.

“The gift of experience is perspective and the perspective I have now is that you are the best thing I could ever do with my life.”

• Yes that’s real. I was proud of myself. Thank you. Lol

The reason I said this is that I had already experienced failure. I had already experienced life without her. I had already failed more spectacularly than I could ever do again.

My experience was failure and it served to inform what my future could be. What it is now. With risk.

Risk is inevitable.

Life is risky.

Getting in a car is super risky.

Yet you do it every day.

Let fear help shape your risk’s but do not let it hinder your life.

Just because something is different, has the possibility for a worse outcome or has numeral disadvantages on paper….Does not mean it is the wrong decision.

I have learned that failure is the key to success.

Every failure is a lesson learned and a step forward.

However every failure you do not use as a tool to move forward, actually helps you take steps back.

Choose to live.

Choose to live fearless.

Choose the possibility of failure because your life depends on it.

Or just go back to work and forget you read this.

You probably will.

I hope you were able to dream for a moment that things could be different.

Maybe one day it will….

Maybe not.

Peace.

Zack Schuyler

Managing Partner FMG