When you risk, you don’t know how it will turn out. It’s possible that you won’t get what you want, that things will be worse. But you’ll still be better off, because you’ll be living in the world as it is, not in an imaginary reality created by your fear.
Lauren decided to leave her husband. She said, “I don’t know how much time I have left. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being told I’m worthless.”
When I witness patients going nowhere, spinning on a relentless merry-go-round of self-destructive behavior, I confront them.
“Why are you choosing a self-destructive life? Do you want to die?”
They say, “Yes, sometimes I do.”
It’s a profoundly human question: To be or not to be?
I hope you always choose to be. You’re going to be dead anyway someday, and you’ll be dead for a very long time. Why not become curious? Why not see what this life has to offer you?
Curiosity is vital. It’s what allows us to risk. When we’re full of fear, we’re living in a past that already happened, or a future that hasn’t arrived. When we’re curious, we’re here in the present, eager to discover what’s going to happen next. It’s better to risk and grow, and maybe fail, than to remain imprisoned, never knowing what could have been.
KEYS TO FREE YOURSELF FROM PARALYZING FEAR
I can. I want. I’m willing. For one day, keep track of every time you say I can’t, I need, I should, and I’m trying. “I can’t” means I won’t. “I need” and “I should” mean I’m abdicating my freedom of choice. And “I’m trying” is lying. Eliminate this language from your vocabulary. You can’t let go of something unless you replace it with something else. Replace the language of fear with something else: I can, I want, I’m willing, I choose, I am.
Change is synonymous with growth. Do one thing differently today than you did yesterday. If you always drive the same way to work, take a different route—or ride your bike or take a bus. If you’re usually too rushed or preoccupied to chat with the checker at the grocery store, try making eye contact and conversation. If your family is usually too busy to eat together, try sitting down to a meal together without the TV on or cell phones at the table. These small steps might seem inconsequential, but they actually train your brain to know that you’re capable of change, that nothing is locked in stone, that your choices and possibilities are endless. And getting curious about your life helps turn your anxiety into excitement. You don’t have to stay where you are, how you are, doing what you’re doing. Mix things up. You’re not stuck.
Identify your fears. Make a list of your fears. For each fear, ask, “Is this my fear? Or someone else’s?” If it’s a fear you’ve inherited or taken on, cross it off your list. Let it go. It isn’t yours to carry. For each remaining fear, decide how realistic it is. If it is a valid concern given the facts of your life, circle it. For each realistic fear, decide if it causes you distress or stress. Distress is chronic danger and uncertainty. If you’re living in distress, your foremost responsibility is to tend to your safety and survival needs, to the degree that this is possible. Do whatever is in your power to protect yourself. If the fear is causing you stress, acknowledge that stress can be healthy. Notice how stress might be giving you an opportunity to grow. Finally, for each of the realistic fears, generate a list of things you could do today on your own behalf to strengthen yourself and build the life you want.
Chapter 10
THE NAZI IN YOU
The Prison of Judgment
When Audrey and I were in Lausanne, Switzerland, last year, I gave a keynote address to an inspiring group of global executives and leadership coaches at the International Institute of Management Development, one of Europe’s top business schools. At the dinner after my address the guests stunned me with their heartfelt toasts of thanks and appreciation. One man in particular struck me. He was tall, with wavy hair beginning to gray, his thin face dominated by sad, intellectual eyes. He said that my words about forgiveness, in particular, had felt like a gift. Then he began to cry. Tears streaming down his face, he said, “I have a story, too. It is so hard to tell it.”
Audrey caught my eye. Something passed between us, a silent recognition of trauma’s collateral damage, the pain that’s passed on when a secret is kept. When the formal meal concluded, she excused herself and threaded her way through the crowded room to the man’s table. When she returned, she said, “His name is Andreas and you definitely need to hear his story.”
Our schedule was packed, but Audrey arranged for me to have a private lunch with Andreas the next day, before we flew home. In a quiet, thoughtful way, he laid out the pieces of his personal history, jigsaw moments of realization that he had put together over time.
In the first puzzle piece, he’s nine years old and stands with his father at an exhibition in a small village outside Frankfurt. “Son, this is a list of all the mayors of this town,” his father intones, pointing with a heavy finger to one name: Hermann Neumann. Hermann is Andreas’s middle name. His father’s finger taps the name, his tone a peculiar mix of sorrow, anger, longing, and pride as he says, “This is your grandfather.”
Andreas’s grandfather died a decade before he was born. He had no personal frame of reference, no idea what sort of man he’d been, what it felt like to sit on his knee or hear him tell a story. No one spoke of his grandfather. Instead there was a weighty silence in the place where
