Are you afraid to live?

I get asked a lot about how I come up with things to blog about. It is a little strange. I have all these jumbled words in my head waiting to form some semblance of a sentence and then paragraphs and finally a blog post. I write in fragmented sentences. It’s just what I do. It’s how I talk. It’s my style. Sorry if it drives people crazy. Sometimes, I get inspiration from clients. Sometimes I get inspiration from something I see on social media. Sometimes, something just pops into my head and I type it in my notes app on my phone and then hope that I remember what the hell I was talking about when I go back to review. I have a long list of notes. The problem is when I am going back to start writing a post, there might be just four words or three or maybe just a phrase. For example, as I was going back today to look at my notes entries, I found one that said, “Do you live in fear?” I’m glad it triggered me into remembering what I wanted to write about, because sometimes it doesn’t. I hate when that happens.

Do you live in fear? What does that even mean? Do you know?

If you follow my blog you know that my last few blog posts have been about life and have had a lot of reflection going on. They have been pretty serious. This is a serious one too, but in a different way.

Living in fear. When I say living in fear, I mean living in fear of disease. Living in fear of dying. Living in fear of living. A lot of people are afraid to live, don’t you think? I sure do.

The more we fear, the more we make ourselves bat shit crazy. I think the last month or so, has been very sobering. I have written about young people having heart attacks and young people dying. I have written about dead people in cemeteries. It makes you take a look at your own life. Pretty soon the voice creeps in. You know which one I’m talking about. The asshole fear voice. We all have it inside of us. When we are feeling vulnerable, or scared or alone, it usually makes its appearance. So the voice starts in, making you wonder. Do I have cancer floating around in my body? I HAVE been soooooo tired lately. I HAVE been feeling weak. Or you wonder if that little twinge you feel in your chest means you are going to have a heart attack. You wonder if because you are eating crappy food you are going to make yourself sick. You wonder if you are going to get heart disease or cancer or any other lifestyle disease. It is so easy to become OCD about this. It is so easy to get hung up on this mentality. So many people do it. So many people can’t get away from it. It consumes them. Pretty soon, you don’t want to go play outside with the kids or grandkids. Pretty soon, you just want to hang out on the couch and watch TV. Pretty soon, you are afraid to do ANYTHING.

I think we have certain expectations of how we should be, of how we should feel, of how we want to be and of how we want to feel. When those expectations are not being met to our OCD standards, we freak out a little. It’s okay to a certain extent. But, when thoughts like that start consuming us all the time, we need to step back and reevaluate what is going on with our health. We need to check it and listen to our body. We need to separate fiction from reality. We need to know the damn difference. We need to take a little inventory. Stress much? Sleep much? Play much? Eat much? Work much?

Take a step back and do a little reality check with yourself. Find that positive voice. You know which one I’m talking about. The nice and friendly voice. The one that says, “Nice job on the eight hours of sleep last night.” Or, “Nice job relaxing after work today.” The one that says, “You rocked your eating today.” You know, the positive voice The one that likes you. The one that looks out for you. The voice we should be listening to 90 percent of the time.

We need to quit living in fear and quit being afraid to live our lives. Get out there and try something new. Get out there and enjoy your kids or grandkids. Get our there and live your life! We are all going to die sometime. Don’t live in fear. Fear is a liar.