The worst thing about fear

I WAS going to write a totally different newsletter this week, buuuut then I came across a quote which totally resonated for me.

I don’t know about you, but I’m probably the emotion I’m most familiar with is fear.

In fact, when Nicole was teaching me how to trail ride (kind of an overwhelming terrifying experience for this novice rider), I used to call it “Fear Therapy.”

We started out on the flat.

There’s a trail near here called the Rail Trail. So called because it runs where railroad tracks used to historically.

This trail is flat. Just how I used to like it.

It’s great for walking, cycling, dogs, children, short or long excursions.

If you can handle the mosquitoes anyway.

Anyway, so I’ve never had the desire to ride horses competitively (that’s Nicole’s thing for sure), but I’ve always fantasized about them carrying miles into the backcountry where I can see the sites, hunt, and fish.

For that to happen, I was going to have to leave the FLAT eventually.

Trouble is, in Utah, where we live, there’s not much of a gradient. There’s flat and, like, STRAIGHT UP.

Or at least that’s how it feels on horse back.

So Nicole found a trail that, at least for the first ½ mile was tolerable. A bit more than flat, for sure, but nothing too gnarly.

We did that section of the trail a couple of times.

We’d ride up until it felt like the saddle was going to slip off the back end of the horse and I was white knuckling the reins, and then turn around.

The way back I’d be leaning back so far my abs got a fantastic workout.

Nicole was patient, and seemed to always be able to calibrate for exactly the level of intensity I could handle.

I’d get back to the truck and, as we were putting the horses away in the trailer, she’d ask how it was.

For the first few trips I’d say “it was…meaningful. Terrifying. I’m glad I came.”

It wasn’t fun, or relaxing. Not for me anyway.

But then came the next trip.

We went back to the same trail—the trail I was starting to affectionately call “1/2 mile trail,” because that’s as far as I would go on it.

When we arrived at the usual turn-around spot, I was feeling pretty calm. Heck, I’d done this section of the trail enough times it was feeling “old hat.”

I mildly suggested to Nicole that maybe we could…go a little further.

The next thing I knew, 42 hellish and exhilarating minutes later, I had gone a couple more miles, gone to the trails termination point at a parking lot atop a ridge, encountered a rattlesnake, and trotted, walked, and jumped astride my reliable mustang.

It was a tremendous leap forward in my capabilities as a trail rider, and it was FUN.

I was also like “oh, crap, now I have to go DOWN all of that?” …because the only way back to the truck was the way we’d come up.

But when we got back to the truck and were loading up the horses, I was giddy. It was still quite the intense experience, but it was also possibly the first time I’d truly had FUN riding horses.

That trip led to subsequent more and more technical trails, and by the time the season was over I’d completed one of the most technical trails in our area of Utah.

Now that trail was nuts.

It’s the kind of trail you surprise hikers on because they never expect to see a horse in such conditions.

I loved it.

Sheer drops offs? Not a problem.

Steep inclines and declines? Whatevs.

Riding through a nest of rattle snakes? Exhilarating!

So for me the quote at the beginning really resonates because I’ve found that fear just chases you away from the things you want, and if you give in to it, in extreme cases, you can literally end up house bound, incapable of even going for a walk.

Like my mom. Wonderful woman, but she’s exactly the cautionary tale of what happens if you don’t put your fears precisely where they belong—which is, at best, in the passenger seat.

See, my mom almost never leaves the house. Her fears have become so advanced that, at this point, it’s a mental illness.

She literally allowed her fears to chase her inside, and then, when that wasn’t enough, into her closet.

She won’t travel. She won’t attend any social functions. Her fears rule her existence so profoundly she doesn’t even go on walks (and the home she shares with my dad is absolutely surrounded by spectacular nature paths).

In fact, when we visit, she flits out from her sound-proof closet for 5-10 minutes to give us hugs and chat for a few moments before sliding back into her safe place.

To me this has always been the most visceral example of what can happen if we let our fears rule us.

It’s part of the reason why I (even if I’m not laughing, per se, in the face of it) I DO stare my fears in the face.

Starting a business? Scary.

Worse? Keeping that business going. Relentlessly investing in that business (this one: Resilient Reiner & The Mental Gym for Equestrians) BECAUSE it’s important. It changes people’s lives and staring down my fear to help make that happen is absolutely worth it.

Don’t be like my mom. Allow fear to, perhaps, be a passenger in the vehicle of your life, but NEVER allow it to be the driver.

…

So here’s the thing, it occurs to me that a lot of us, in our rush to dismiss fear, fail to appreciate it—and it occurs to me that probably ain’t “healthy” either.

Let’s take a moment to give fear its due, too, and give it some gratitude for how it works (desperately) to protect us.

…

How can we release our fear? Work with it? Move past it?

Honestly? Part of it is just recognizing what happens if we let it drive the vehicle of our life. SERIOUSLY, you do NOT want to spend the rest of your life in your closet (you might think I’m making this up, I’m emphatically NOT).

And part of it is recognizing what it’s TRYING to do, expressing gratitude, and then saying “I’ve got this. I can trust myself, rely on myself…I can do great things.”

I also think a lot of it can be doing something similar to what me and Nicole did to get me comfortable trail riding (and then doing highly technical trail riding): bite off a little more than you’re comfortable with. Do that until you start getting bored doing it.

Then do a little more.

If you bite off more than you can chew?

Do half as much.

And work your way back.

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Be it starting a business or keeping one running.

Or looking for a job (as I am).

Or doing something new and scary like trail riding…

The worst thing you can do is just allow all your fears to keep you on the sideline, stuck in the land of “what if.”

See, if you DON’T start doing what you dream of, you might end up like the colleague I had who worked diligently for a bank, finally retired after 30 years of “service” and died a year later.

I seriously doubt she dreamed of spending her life that way. Working for a bank. In the back office.

Do you think her single year of life in retirement made it worth it?

As you’ve probably figured out by now, the worst thing about fear is simply how it holds us back from a rich life of meaning.

I hope you join me in living on the courageous side of life, facing our fears, one at a time, and growing stronger and more joyful and confident as we do so.

Until next time…

Adiós, mi amigos!

Abe

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