So how do we identify our fears?
I can tell you what I did.
I wrote them down.
I asked myself, “What am I afraid of doing?”
Then I asked, “What are the traumatic events from my childhood, and how do they still impact me?”
I followed that up by watching myself carefully, and noticed those areas where I was defensive, offensive, put other people down, or built myself up.
I put them all down on paper, and grouped them into categories, and pretty soon, I noticed a pattern in my fears, and with a little help from a good therapist, realized that they all boiled down to two or three key issues which were my original pain points from my childhood.
What was amazing about the exercise was that once I realized that the underlying issues were, the issues seemed to have magically disappeared. (This is not to say that I don’t need to be diligent about staying on top of my pain points, but the fears are gone.)
It seems that the funny thing about certain issues is that what bothers us more about things is that we don’t understand ourselves, and not the actual issue itself. So its almost like once we understand the issue, the issue seems to dissipate since in truth, the internal friction goes away – and it was this friction that needed to be addressed.
Of course, to get to the bottom of these core issues, probably took me hundreds of hours if not more, and it is possible that I am still not close to done, and am just fooling myself. However, I have a general feeling that I am really getting close, and if nothing else understand myself better, and that really is the whole goal of this project anyways.