Don't Let Your Fears Decide Your Fate

If y'all are hip and savvy like me, you know that the title of this blog comes from a song called "Kill Your Heroes" by Awolnation.

I like it.  It's a good lesson.

But alas, I often let my fears decide my fate, or a more truthful statement might be that because of my fears, I self-sabotage and the things I fear become self-fulfilling prophecies.  A prophet.  But not in a good way.

I'm an idiot a lot of the times.  I sit back and worry that my friends will think I'm fat or unkept (unkempt? I think that's a word), or that my family judges the job that I have, that good things happening to those I love mean that they'll see me in a different light, and believe that I am the fraud I often think I am.

It's all a crazy eight that I spin around, high around the circle, then a plummet, then high again, and oh look, I'm where I was two weeks ago!  Fortunately, now that I'm older, I can control the spinning before it becomes a seemingly endless loop.  I hear a song by Awolnation and they say "don't let your fear decide your fate" and I'm like,  "Yeah, I can't do that!"

I recognize that kindness to others helps me with my fears.  When I'm kind to others --- smile at a stranger, write a love note, make a phone call or send a text, I don't have that fear.  I just do it because I know it will make the other person feel better somehow.

I've spouted off in my younger years, righteous and pompous and a know-it-all.  It stemmed from fear.  I'm better, your worse, I feel better because I made you feel worse.

Now that I'm older, I try not to do that.  Yet, there are still millennials in the world, so it's a battle.

Ever since my children could understand words (or recognize that I was saying words, even if they didn't know what the words meant), I've been telling them to be self-aware.

Be self-aware.

Show your kindness, it comes back to you.  If you're spouting and pompous, check yourself.  If you're walking through a grocery store and you're on a call, and it's on speakerphone, and someone gives you a dirty look because they just don't care what color the salon painted your nails and how you told them that it wasn't the color you picked but they said it was and you said you wouldn't pay and they said you had to pay. . . pay attention!  Hang up the phone and call when you're not surrounded by groceries and angry women. Or an angry woman.  Or me.

I guess if you're kind and self-aware, the fear doesn't get in as easily.

The crazy eight spin --- I think I just wrote myself off that ride before it even started.

It's nice to be able to do that now that I'm older with hip and savvy music tastes.