Fear vs. Excitement
Tomorrow night I'm headed to Peru for a little over two weeks. In preparation for our trip, I've felt an incredible amount of anxiety knowing that this experience is going to be challenging and expansive in all the ways I couldn't possibly predict or imagine. A sister I was recently chatting with asked me “on a scale of 1-10 how excited are you? vs. on a scale of 1-10 how scared are you?” and I realized that part of me isn't fully certain of the difference between the two because of how similar they feel in my body.
Recently Scott and I went snowboarding and I haven't been for over ten years so I was essentially learning for the first time. After getting incredibly humbled by my first day on the mountain, we decided to book a second day. As Scott and I rode up the ski lift, I thought I might throw up from the fear and anxiety overcoming me. Every time we made it to the bottom of the mountain, the relief was proportionately as blissful. I realized part of the fear was knowing that once we got to the top, I was going to have to make it back down one way or another… and in between point A and B was a lot of uncertainty.
At some point during the day, things started to click and I was feeling more confident, present, and playful. Scott and I decided to do a final few trails and at this point, the ride up felt so exciting… but somatically, it was almost the same. My heart was pounding, I was hyper-aware of my breath, I felt butterflies, etc. I still didn't know what was going to happen between point A and point B, but now I had trust that I was going to make it down.
All of this is a long story to say that I think oftentimes the secret ingredient differentiating anxiety/fear from excitement is trust. An innate knowing that everything is going to be okay and on the other side of every contractive experience is expansion. Of course, the parts of us that are expressing fear should be acknowledged, especially if we are genuinely in danger…but I have been reflecting on how much those two responses get cross wired within my own body and how life might unfold differently if I leaned in the direction of trust more.
How might your life unfold differently if you leaned in the direction of trust more? What would it be like to know that on the other side of every contractive life experience, lives boundless expansion if you can stay embodied through the experience? Sending you big love, wherever you might find yourself between point A and point B. Everything is going to be more than okay :)