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Recently we started to exercise our curiosity muscles.
Now, we are going to apply curiosity to fear.
In the Playing Big course, we discuss more than a dozen different tools we can use to move out of fear. But this is one of my personal favorites.
Fear and curiosity can’t coexist. We simply can’t feel both at the same time.
When we say we are both curious and afraid about something – a new job, for example – what we are really saying is we alternate between moments of feeling curious and moments of feeling afraid. In any given moment, our physiology can only be in one mode – fear or curiosity.
This means that when we move into a state of curiosity, we automatically move out of a state of fear. And since fear is uncomfortable, and tends to lead us away from sound thinking and positive, loving action – it’s a very good idea to move out of fear.
So here’s the practice for this week: When you are feeling afraid about something, ask yourself, “What about this situation can I get curious about?”
Because fear often comes up in situations of uncertainty, there is often an unknown outcome around the thing we’re feeling afraid about.
Can you get curious about what that outcome will be? Wondering, fascinated?
Can you get interested in what this situation will reveal to you about life, about yourself, about the nature of things?
Let me know how it goes.
Love,
Tara
photo credit: Ronaldo Oliveira
