Combating Fear

Post 2016 election, I felt a lot of things come up for me. The emotions from that, coupled of the departure of a few close friends, came in waves at random moments all week. I felt myself bounce between sadness and fear and back to sadness again. As I’m writing, I’m sitting in the Verve cafe in West Hollywood and watching a beautiful rainstorm outside – a LA rarity. The rain is coming down in sheets, skipping across the green and blue tiles by the entrance of the shop. It reminds me of a much-needed cleansing. A washing away of all the extraneous stuff in our lives. I truly believe that our growth comes from how we choose to react when people and things we take as constants in our lives are suddenly removed or changed. Impermanence is simply the transient nature of our humanity.

If change is inevitable – instead of gripping tighter in fear of losing something, can we ask ourselves how can we expand? Where can we find a bit of love in our lives to combat the fear? Because when fear comes up, we often push it away fiercely or cave into it, but the best thing to do is acknowledge it and find an antidote to fight it.

For me, there’s a couple of things I do to overcome my fears when I feel it creeping up. I write to release and cope. I sit in silence or walk outside to find some grounding. I practice yoga and tennis to feel a reservoir of strength inside. When your sadness or fear starts feeling overwhelming, overcome it instead by finding a moment of creativity, a moment of solitude, or a moment of strength. And maybe learning to see people with a bit more compassion and understanding. If you focus your attention on love, you’ll find more of it expanding into your life. If you focus your energy on fear, you’ll fall deeper into it. Ask yourself what you can do in the moment to shift from fear.