Fear of "What If"

"What if.."? - Let's face it, we all deal with questions starting with these two words everyday. From tiny matters like, "What if I forget about everything else and stay in bed all day today?" to important life altering decisions like, "What if I choose Ph.D over job?" Even Pooh bear has those days when he thinks, what if he faces those moments when he feels he's not strong enough, brave enough or smart enough? As we become adults we face these moments more, and start making anxiety and depression our eternal friends. 

But what are the underlying reasons behind this dilemma? After thinking about it for a while, I reached the age-old conclusion, it's the fear of failure. And what underpins that fear is the shame of not being good enough. Little kids don't feel it that strongly. As they learn to walk, they fall many times, but they never get afraid of falling and being hurt. They embrace that happily, and eventually learn to walk bravely. That's the beauty of careless childhood, but as we grow older and experience more, those fear of pain gets enrooted in our brain, and we're too afraid to face those vulnerabilities. We don't want any failure to cause disgrace to ourselves as that might make us less worthy of connection with other people. Sometimes we let that seed of "What if" sit in our brain and branch out so big that we're too afraid to take a new step, embrace a challenge, or just get out of our comfort zone.

I painted today, too, and named it "Dilemma". So which way will you choose?

It often gets me thinking, how to deal with these "what if"s of life, and the excruciating vulnerability? For me, the most important thing is to follow my heart, and do what really keeps me moving forward. Might sound cliche, but it's not an easy thing to do. As a strong believer in science, and being a person who tries to rationalize every single act, there're times when my brain and heart don't go along with each other. And that's the only solution I found to reach a fair decision in the battle ground between brain and soul - you prioritize things that make you happy, and you choose your life options based on that. Yes, one option can be better than another based on many factors, and different people will give you different suggestions based on their perspective of life. But the take out should be, put the things first that make YOU happy, and NOT the other person. We're all unique and have different perspectives towards life. So, it's important that we don't compare our lives with others but learn. 

Whenever I get hit by my inner vulnerability hard, I find myself getting back to Dr. Brené Brown's talk, "The Power of Vulnerability". I like the way she puts it in her talk-

Courage to be imperfect. The word courage originated from the Latin word "cor", and the original definition is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. Let's embrace it, we're all imperfect in some ways, but not everyone has the courage to embrace the imperfection. And it's our duty to teach this to our kids from childhood - "You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you're worthy of love and belonging". That doesn't mean we should stop trying to overcome our imperfections, it means we should believe that we're enough.

Compassion to be kind to yourself and then to be others. And "When we work from a place that says, "I'm enough", then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves."

Connection as a result of authenticity, willing to let go who you think you should be in order to be who you are.

And most of all, fully embrace vulnerability. What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. It's the willingness to say I love you first, willingness to do something where there's no guarantee, willingness to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. It takes courage to accept that fear of "what if", and as a result makes us stronger. 

I love these last few sentences -

To embrace vulnerability is to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen, to love with our whole hearts even though there's no guarantee, to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror when we're wondering, Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this? Just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, and because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." 

As for me, this is how I try to bring the war of heart and brain in peace - it's to remind myself that there's no single right way to lead our life or to do things, and there's nothing called ultimate perfection. There's no perfect place to live, perfect job to do, perfect person to be with. But it's us who find perfection hidden beneath those imperfections, it's us who decide we love that certain place, job or person for their perfections, along with their imperfections; and we know we can love them for how they are without willing to change them. And we should treat ourselves the same way as well.