The million-dollar fear
Subtle emotions hold you back
Two things hold me back in life: in their most basic form, fear and sadness.
Fear is often thought of as an overwhelming emotion, like being sh*t scared of spiders. Yet I’ve spent more of my life debilitated by its more subtle form: worry.
Sadness is synonymous with depression, but again, a more subtle form is equally debilitating: listlessness. I.e., a lack of energy to get things done.
Bigger emotions are easier to deal with; they demand attention. The subtle ones sit there, getting in the way almost undetected.
It’s like having a mouse compared to an elephant in a room. Despite the cliche, you can’t actually ignore a physical elephant entering the room, but you can be completely unaware of a mouse.
The elephant bashes a door down on the way in, commanding instant attention. The mouse gnaws away until one day you notice the furniture has been destroyed from beneath you (and there are little sh*ts under all of it).
Just like the mouse lurking between the floorboards and the couch, these subtle emotions seem to lurk somewhere between the conscious and subconscious mind.
It takes deliberate attention to notice and tease them out.
Recently I’ve been thinking about what drives my tendency to be a master procrastinator.
Firstly, I can be stalled for action because I’m worried about making a mistake, which tends to result in me getting stuck in perfectionist paralysis1, or making a fool of myself — aka being overly concerned about what other people think.
Then when it’s not worry, it’s listlessness. Despite intention and deep desire to acheive something, I lack the energy and enthusiasm to start.
It’s taken me years to realise this is actually what’s going on. The next step is working through overcoming them. On one hand, stop people pleasing, and on the other, start to just start.
Bias to action and not giving a f*ck about what other people think. That’s the stuff millionairres are made of…
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Cover/insert image: Generated on Substack using prompt “elephant on a couch with a mouse hiding under the couch”
Many thanks to Dr Amelia Harray PhD, AdvAPD for introducing me to the term perfectionist paralysis!