Some years ago my husband and I went on a great summer holiday.
We stayed in the honeymoon suite in a lodge high on the dunes. We started our days with long walks on the beach. The rest of the day was spent rotating from the main pool at the beach bar, to the lodge pool and, finally, the splash pool on our deck. Delicious meals, ice-cold cocktails, oily massages on the sun deck and long afternoon naps were the tracks that our days ran on.
At the end of the day, four course dinners under a visible milky way were followed by a wine-wobble walk back to our suite.
We spent our trip back home debating where this holiday stood in the rankings of our top holidays. This holiday felt like “needs met”. Total body and mind relaxation and spirit restored.
Days after we returned home we no longer felt relaxed and restored. This didn’t feel like the usual “coming down from a holiday high”. This felt more like realising we were the proverbial frog in the now boiling water.
We had been wrestling for some time with our dissatisfaction with our lives but kept diminishing our feelings by telling ourselves things like: everybody feels this. It’s part of being an adult. We’re just feeling burnout or we’re probably having a midlife crisis. Or we need to do more of this or if we just added that to our lives we’ll feel better.
This holiday was supposed to be part of our solution but it just highlighted how we could feel but weren't feeling.
We had our own business, which we’d started from scratch, and our days were focussed on our clients and 15 staff. We were often working 16 hour days so the only time we had to express our feelings to one another was during our early morning walks with our dogs.
One of our other favourite things to tell ourselves was that we should be grateful for the lives we were living. Many others would appreciate what we had. But no matter what we told ourselves we just felt worse.
During our sunrise walks with our dogs we started to fantasize about running away from what we had created and starting over. One of my husband’s favourite fantasies was to buy a plot of rural land and build a log cabin. At six foot six and built like a rugby player all he needed was the plaid shirt, an axe and a saw and he was ready for his new lumberjack life.
I was concerned about what we’d do once the cabin was built.
One morning, as we were coming to the end of our walk, I told him that my concern was that we had designed this life and we needed to make sure that whatever design flaws we’d built into this life we didn’t replicate in the next phase of our lives. What we were feeling wasn’t someone else’s fault and we needed to understand why we were feeling the way we were before drawing up designs for whatever was going to be next.
But, let me tell you, we felt desperate and trapped. We would typically characterise ourselves as happy people but there wasn’t much in our lives making us happy at this point.
The more we gave voice to our feelings the less we cared about what “we should be feeling”.
My husband told me that he wasn’t even sure he liked himself anymore. We were twisting and distorting ourselves to fit into the life we had made.
Our relationship was our joy but we were worried that, if we continued this way, it would eventually break under the pressure of our dissatisfaction too.
We consider ourselves to be problem solvers and, working together, there wasn’t much that we felt we couldn’t. But, in this instance, we started to feel like we were spinning our wheels. We just weren’t gaining traction. Eventually, our conversations started to sound like a script - we were adding nothing new, just repeating ourselves.
We recognised that we were not making headway and that frustration just added to our intense feelings of discontent.
Mentally, emotionally and physically we felt exhausted. A virtually constant exhaustion that we couldn’t escape.
I am a voracious reader and, some years prior, I had read From Sex to Superconsciousness by Osho. There he talks about digging a well. You know, an old fashioned well.
When you dig a well you start by removing things. Clearing the area, removing stones and sand to get to the water that’s beneath. Creating space so that the water can well up.
Reading this really stood out to me. So often I would look at adding something - we must do more of this, add this, and that will change things. However, sometimes we need to look at what we must remove.
If the environment is cluttered no matter what you add it will just be drowned out by what’s already there. There’s no space to contain what you have added.
If water rises up and you haven’t cleared space for it you don’t have a well - clear water that you can use - you have a muddy, marshy mess.
Inspired by this, we started to look at what wasn’t working for us in our lives. It turned out to be a long list.
Although this provided us with some clarity it also added to the pressure we felt to escape our lives because we now saw evidence of the list everyday.
Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely experience. It has unique stressors that not everyone shares. We knew this from our own experience and from being a listening ear to our clients, often also entrepreneurs.
We still didn’t feel any progress or relief. We were grinding our gears. We needed to add some oil so that our gears could engage and we could move forward. From our personal experiences of therapy and counselling, we knew that the right third party could provide the perspective, objectivity and insight to shift our gears; so that they could engage again.
It was at this point that we started seeing a Life Coach. Someone that we were both comfortable with.
Being able to share the burden of our frustrations and how trapped we felt brought us immediate relief. In these sessions we started to explore and question the design of our lives and the beliefs that these designs were built on. We debated, struggled and uprooted things we no longer believed but were still acting on. We learnt new skills to use in building our metaphorical cabin and well.
Thing is, fear’s a bitch. It’s scary to let go of what you know, the life you’ve created, the business you’ve built.
What were we thinking? This was going to be our most profitable year since we’d started our business. Suddenly there were so many good things about our lives!
Still our unhappiness persisted.
Then, one day, we reached a tipping point. We realised that our fear of things remaining the same was greater than our fear of things changing. We had to choose our fear.
But what were we choosing? What was next? We had little to no idea.
Letting go of what you know is scary, but having nothing to grab onto is fucking terrifying.
Void. What if we create the space for the well and no water springs up? What if we’re wrong? What if we fail?What if? What if? What if?
There were many, many, many reasons why we thought we couldn’t do it. But each obstacle we looked at we saw as a hurdle to overcome. Instead of accepting that we couldn’t conquer the barrier to what we wanted, we looked at how we could change things so that we could.
But what if we succeed? What if we create the life we dream of?
A string of questions eventually brought us round to a different string of questions. What do we have to hold on to? Each other. Our skills, talent and experience. Our desire to learn. Our desire to change. Knowing that we’ve changed before. Holding onto other times in our lives that we took a risk and it paid off.
As Maya Angelou said: when you know better you do better. We were going to bet that we could create a better life moving forward because we had developed new skills. We know ourselves better and what we want.
We weren’t creating a life for someone else. We were creating the life that we want to live. It didn’t have to work for anybody else but us.
We got lost for a while. Sometimes we make decisions in life in reaction to life’s events. They seem perfectly reasonable at the time. Enough of those decisions eventually led us off course and we realised we ended up somewhere that we weren’t choosing to go. Our lives were so busy that we weren’t choosing our own path; we got knocked off course by life’s little dodgem car decisions.
So we got a new life, right? Not so fast.
Even though we had reached that tipping point of fear, where we knew we were going to choose the fear of change over the fear of things remaining the same, we still didn’t know exactly what our new life entailed. We knew what values and beliefs we’d build on but we didn’t have a clear idea of what the actual building blocks would be.
We didn’t feel ready to start building yet. We were depleted, empty and bone-weary.
We decided to start the work of clearing the stones and the sand to create space for our new life well to spring up. Keeping only the things we knew we wanted to take with us, we dismantled our lives and took a sabbatical to explore, experience and learn. Learn a new way of being. Learn new skills. Learn new hobbies. Learn to live with the fear of not knowing.
We loved having nothing in our diaries and stared gleefully at the emptiness and lack of commitment it represented. Then we forgot to put the rubbish out one Thursday and decided, okay, we’ll compromise and put that one thing in our diary.
At no point did we conquer the fear, the very many fears. We just became more practiced at living with them. We worked on developing skills to handle them.
There were days where we sat on the couch and escaped into Netflix. There were days when we asked ourselves: what have we done? Many, many days, many, many times.
But the space we created for ourselves mentally, emotionally and physically allowed an internal well to spring up that gave us the strength and fortitude to move forward. We focussed these resources, guarded them and nurtured them until we were strong enough to start building again.
We became better at living with the fear. It doesn’t end. Each time we try something new it’s there, but every time we do it anyway we tip the balance and learn that we can do it. We do fail, but we rise and try again.
We started on this new path when we reached the tipping point where our fear of things remaining the same was greater than our fear of things changing. Now the scales tip in our favour each time we accomplish something, in spite of the fear of doing it.
If what I share adds some benefit to your life or touches you please hit a like button, subscribe, share or comment.
When I was 11 years old we moved from a town to a city.
Previously, I’d walked home from school but now I was going to have to take a bus. Actually, two buses. I was to catch any bus from the bus stop outside my school and that would take me to the bus station in the middle of the city.
This was the fourth time I was starting at a new school. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was only half way through the total number of new schools I’d go to. My parents moved around a lot and I was the youngest of three children that moved with them.
At the bus station I had to ask which bus went to the road at the bottom of the road of our new home. As it turned out, the road at the bottom of ours covered half the city. So, even though the bus I got on went to that road, it was the wrong bus and I was miles away from where I needed to be.
The bus driver told me to stay on the bus in order to make the return trip to the bus station, where he’d point me to the correct bus to take. I was the only passenger on the bus all the way back to the bus station.
It was a very scary trip to take. Nothing was familiar to me and the bus trip just confirmed how big this new city was.
This happened in a time way before cell phones, which meant that I had to rely on the help of strangers - armed only with our new address and the name of the road at the bottom of ours.
When we arrived back at the bus station the bus driver showed me the correct bus stop where I was going to find the right bus to get me home. But, he told me, the next bus was not due for some time and I must come with him to have a Fanta Orange while I waited.
I followed him over the big, wide road to a hotel where we sat at a table.
No matter how many new schools I went to, I was always the shortest in my class, and my feet swung far above the ground. I can’t recall what we spoke about but at some point he started talking about a room upstairs in the hotel.
Inside me it felt like I split in two and my sister-self and I screamed into each other’s faces “RUN”.
I leaped off that chair and as my tiny shoes hit the floor I flung over my shoulder “I think I’ll just wait at the bus stop” and half walked-ran out of the hotel as quickly as my little legs could carry me.
I didn’t know why, but suddenly the multi-laned road wasn’t the scariest thing to face on my return trip to the bus station.
Life. Changing. Decision.
Something about the exchange made me scared.
I had experienced a lot of fear that afternoon already - another first day at a new school, being alone in a strange city, asking strangers for help, being on the wrong bus, being alone for hours - but that fear felt different. I didn’t know why at the time but I acted on it.
My fear protected me. That’s the purpose of fear - to protect us.
It serves a vital purpose in our lives. Without fear we would all die early deaths and probably wipe out the species.
Fear is part of our learning experience, and as we progress through life, we develop quite a repertoire of things to be fearful of.
A month after my 19th birthday I was standing in an airport about to experience my first flight. I’d worked hard to get here - a day job, a night job and a weekend job. The backpack on my back shining red with naivete, possibility and danger.
I stepped away from the 3 people who’d come to see me off. Holding up a hand to indicate that I needed a moment, I walked over to a big sturdy pillar, leant my backpack against it and slid to the floor with the grace of under cooked spaghetti. I stared at the ground thinking what am I doing???
My plan was to backpack around Europe for a year. I knew no-one who had done this and definitely no-one who’d done it alone but here I was on the precipice of a great adventure or the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
What was I thinking?! What am I doing??!! What made me think I could do this???!!! What made me think this would be fun???!!! I had no answer to any of these questions.
I was paralysed with fear.
Okay, okay, okay, I said to myself, what are our options now? Well, I told myself, if you hate it you can get on the next plane back. But, if you don’t go, you’ll never know.
Suddenly I was no longer paralysed. I didn't really have a plan of action, but I had managed to delay the fight or flight response. Don’t make a decision now, make it when you get to Paris!
Both of these points, both of these responses, both decisions were about fear.
Remember the gorilla that accompanied me into the dentist’s office? He was there to protect me. Fear is often a healthy response. Fear pops up as a buffer, a pause, let’s just give this a little thought shall we?
What we need to acknowledge is that fear comes from love. Our reptilian brain wants to keep us safe and protect us and that’s what fear’s job is.
But if we always listened to fear. If we always turn back when our stomach drops and takes us and our backpack to the floor with it we will miss out on some of the greatest adventures of our lives!
When I got up from the floor of that airport, fear hadn’t been vanquished. It wasn’t that I was no longer fearful. No, what I did was pack that fear in my backpack along with everything else. It was coming on the trip with me. I couldn’t get rid of it so it had to come along.
Elizabeth Gilbert is best known for her book “Eat, Pray, Love” but my favourite of her books (so far) is “Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear”. In there she talks about the fear of creative endeavour - like writing a book, which is a lengthy process where you encounter fear regularly.
The solution that she’s developed is that she acknowledges that fear has a role to play and will accompany her on her book writing journey. She likens it to a road trip where fear is allowed in the car but isn’t allowed to decide where they’re going or what music they’re going to listen to.
As much as our fear’s intention is to protect us, if we want to grow, if we want to experience adventure and accomplishment we have to learn to find ways to move forward in spite of the fear; which often means taking the first, and the last steps, with our fear in step with us.
Unspooling at the bottom of that pillar in that airport is such an emotionally and visually vivid memory to me but so are the memories that came after that moment. At key, crucial moments in my life I’ve recalled that experience and then everything that came after.
It’s reminded me time and time again that I don’t have to overcome the fear. I just have to find a way to move forward with it.
If what I share adds some benefit to your life or touches you please hit a like button, subscribe, share or comment.
I am petrified of dentists.
As a child, my parents moved around a lot and we never had a regular dentist that I got to know and trust. Growing up a dentist extracted the wrong tooth. He extracted the healthy tooth.
As an adult a dentist extracted a tooth that had an abscess beneath it. In case you don’t know, numbing agents don’t work when there is infection present, like an abscess.
I didn’t know at the time that I should have been given antibiotics and then, only once the infection had cleared, should treatment have proceeded.
In 2020, during the first hard lockdown, I bit down on an olive and broke a tooth on the olive pip. Because of my fear of dentists, I ignored it and made excuses about not going to the dentist. Eventually an abscess developed beneath the broken tooth.
I knew from the throbbing on the side of my mouth that my days of ignoring this was over and I had to get it sorted.
This was the worst kind of deja vu. More like a PTSD episode. The exact same situation that I had experienced before where I had been tortured by that arsehole. The thought of lying prone on that chair, under that bright light with hands and instrumentation preventing me from using my voice just debilitated me.
Like Eskimos and snow, when it comes to dentists, I need more words for fear.
I decided to reach out for help and posted a message on my local community WhatsApp group asking what dentist in our area they would recommend. I also reached out to all our friends in our area and asked the same thing.
I then tabulated the results of my survey and chose the dentist with the most recommendations. Being the early stages of COVID no-one was going out except for emergencies so when I called the receptionist said the dentist could see me in an hour.
What???!!! No, no, no, no, no!! I need at least three days to gather my strength.
Also she informed me, due to COVID protocols, I had to wait in my car and they would come and get me from the car.
“My husband can’t come in with me?”
“No. He can’t come into the building.”
Fuck! My big, strong 6’ 6” husband wouldn’t be allowed in the building - never mind in the room - where I wanted him with his hands around the dentist’s neck ready to break it at the smallest squeak from me!
Also, she added, they would all be covered in PPE which may be quite frightening to see and she just wanted me to be prepared.
See? The word fear is just lacking in texture to describe where I was at this point.
I knew I had to move forward. I needed help. I did recognise that preparing me and describing exactly what I was going to encounter - in these very new and strange circumstances at that time - helped me, empowered me with knowledge.
Okay, this was a good sign. It showed me awareness and consideration for my experience, dare I even say, it displayed EQ?
My husband and I strategized my options. If I was uncomfortable, I could leave. The building is not that big and he’d park close to the building and I could shout if I needed him. No-one would stop him getting to me.
It may sound ridiculous to you, but it helped, and I had every intention of using all available options to protect myself if I felt I needed to.
We arrived in the parking lot, followed the protocols as the receptionist had outlined, and then I was called into the building.
I walked towards the consultation room.
Standing in the doorway was a person outfitted in full PPE. I felt like I was on the set of some Sci-Fi movie or maybe Contagion? “Hi”, she said, “I’m Michele, Dr Most Recommended dentist's nurse and this is Dr Most Recommended Dentist”. She took a step into the room.
I paused at the threshold and laid down all my mental armour. “Hi”, I said, “I’m terrified. I know you hear that all the time. But I need you to be gentle with me.”
In that second that I paused at the threshold I had asked myself how will I know if I can trust these people? And then I asked myself what would I do if I knew someone was afraid? How would I behave?
That’s when I decided to lead with my vulnerability because I knew that their reaction to it would let me know if they were capable of creating a safe space for me. I knew that their reaction to me revealing my vulnerability would reveal something I needed to know about them.
If they brushed my fears aside I would have broken the 1 minute mile in my exit. If they had laughed, I would have paused long enough to give them the finger before my speedy departure.
The defense I had left was choice. Yes, I had to see a dentist, but I could go to 4 other appointments with other dentists, if I so chose, before I felt I found one that met my criteria.
“Of course”, they both responded immediately. And while I stood at the precipice of a decision, in that doorway, we talked about what I knew was wrong and that I needed antibiotics to clear up the infection and that they would walk me through my options and proceed at the pace that I was comfortable with.
I stepped forward, submitted to the chair, faced the light and opened my mouth.
The dentist quickly agreed with my self-diagnosis, took me through his thinking and explained the next steps and timing. He prescribed antibiotics to fight the infection and a small half tablet, for my next appointment, to help me relax and fight the fear. I was to take the half tablet 2 hours before my appointment in 3 days to extract the broken tooth.
I left feeling relieved and capable of facing the next step - with the help of my drug courage.
Enough suspense - this story has a happy ending. I returned 3 days later and he extracted the tooth without me experiencing any pain.
Relief!
In a way leading with my vulnerability was a test of their worthiness. How they reacted to my vulnerability was going to tell me who they were. I knew if the roles were reversed I would soften and lead with gentleness because vulnerability is a strength not a weakness.
It takes courage to own your vulnerability and sharing your vulnerability with others - that’s really hard. BUT, and really, this is a BIG BUT so pay close attention. Not everyone is capable of respecting and responding to your vulnerability.
I’ll say it again for the seats in the back. Some people are not capable - are not capable - they lack the skills, they lack the self- awareness, they lack the empathy. They do not see vulnerability as a strength, they see it as a weakness.
I wanted to know who I was dealing with here. Was it someone who saw my fragility in the same light I did or had I just dropped a drop of blood in shark infested waters?
I realised that I wasn’t afraid of saying I’m scared. I was afraid of being in that chair. However, I also realised that if I found a dentist I could work with, who would take my fear into consideration, I would be able to move forward.
The expression “in the grip of fear” is a common one because it describes the immobility that accompanies the feeling. The powerlessness of being unable to move - that it feels like an external force is acting upon us - we feel overwhelmed by fear.
We often think, as I did, what are my options to confront this fear? How am I going to oppose it? I want to feel the opposite of fear so surely I must oppose it? Reject the thing I am feeling. Push it aside. Try and escape it. Run away from it.
Have you ever heard the self defense advice that if someone grabs you, instead of resisting, you should relax your entire body? Become a dead weight because it will be harder for the person to move you. Give up on resisting and just give up - drop your resistance.
Looking back, that's what I did in that dentist’s office. Instead of trying to put on a brave face or ignoring the huge gorilla that walked into that room with me. I owned it and said you can’t see it but I’ve just stepped into this room in the grip of a gorilla - not just any random gorilla, MY gorilla.
This gorilla that has been terrorizing me since I was a child - that visits me whenever it wants. Turning a smart, capable, strong woman into a tortured victim. And my gorilla is telling me that you are going to hurt me. If you’re going to hurt me my gorilla is going to grow.
When I led with vulnerability on the threshold of that door I was asking can you help me slay my gorilla? Can you kill the dragon? Will you help me exorcise my demons?
I don’t have to trust people blindly. Are you someone who is going to help me or hinder me?
Not everyone is worthy. Not everyone knows how to slay a dragon. Some may even piss them off and leave you both badly burnt - or worse!
But there are dragon slayers out there. Of course, completely unhelpfully, they do not prance around in white knight outfits which makes them very difficult to find. But here’s a hint...if your dragons are multiplying or your gorilla is growing they are NOT dragon slayers! They are dragon breeders! GTFO of there!
Another hint is right there in their titles dragon slayers SLAY dragons. You don’t get to call yourself a dragon slayer if your intention is to slay the dragon - that’s just being a wannabe.
You don’t get to call yourself a gorilla wrangler if you can’t herd gorillas.
When we experience a childhood trauma, as I had with dentists, we may find that when we encounter the same or similar situation we revert or retrogress into the child that lived through that trauma - helpless, afraid and perhaps unprotected. It is literally (from an emotional perspective) a belittling experience - we BEcome LITTLE again.
My gorilla felt that ginormous because I felt so little facing it.
But with the help of those kind people who gave me their recommendations, my bear-hearted husband and that dentist and his staff I was able to realise that I was haunched on the floor and that’s why the gorilla seemed that big. I needed to stand to my full height, draw on all my strengths and face that gorilla.
So, we all lived happily ever after, right? Wrong.
As we learned in the movie “How to Train Your Dragon”, there are many different types of dragons. There are also a multitude of metaphorical gorillas.
For years I have wanted to write about the dragons and gorillas I encounter but I have allowed so many different dragons and gorillas to immobilise me. Some of the species I encountered are self-doubt, imposter syndrome - who am I? - what will people think? It’s not as good as I think it can be. I’ll run out of things to write about. There are so many people who know more than me. I was mistaken, I don’t really have anything to share. Blah, blah, blah.
What may kill one species of dragon will feed another species.
But the more dragons I encounter, the better dragon slayer I become.
If what I share adds some benefit to your life or touches you please hit a like button, subscribe, share or comment.