Hi Friends,

Several years ago I went to a daylong event in LA with Liz Gilbert and Rob Bell. They asked us to write six different letters over the course of the day. The first, and my favorite, came from Liz, and has become a prompt I’ve used in many of my own events, including last month’s Writing Yourself workshop.

I’m going to share with you the letter I wrote that day but encourage you to grab your journal or a sheet of paper and write your own letter first. It’s a letter to you from your fear. Do your best to inhabit the voice of your fear and allow it to tell you what its purpose is in your life. What is it doing for you? How is it serving you? Begin the letter with Dear (Your Name), I am your fear and this is what I need to tell you, and then stay as open as possible to what your fear wants to express to you about its purpose. Write until you feel finished, until your fear has said all it needs to say for now.

I’m sure many of you are thinking, I’m not gonna write that letter, and that’s fine, but I promise there’s a solid chance you’ll be grateful you did.

Now I’ll share mine.

Dear Scott,

I am your Fear, and this is what I need to tell you.

This world is not a friendly place, and I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I want you to be quiet and less opinionated. That’s why I keep trying to stop you from sharing yourself. I’m afraid others won’t like or be able to make sense out of what you’re saying and doing. I worry people will judge you, and then you’ll only judge yourself harder. My job is to protect you, to keep you safe and comfortable. I fear people will call you names, and I don’t want you to be condemned by others. The homophobes are bad enough, aren’t they?

I’m afraid the more open you allow yourself to be, the more sensitive you’ll continue to become, and then life will just become more and more uncomfortable for you. I worry you can’t handle all the pain in this world, which is why I push you to escape rather than bear witness and feel. I don’t want you to be crushed under the weight of this planet’s violence and rage. I would rather you be blind to it, for your own good. I just don’t want you to feel as anxious as you do.

I’m scared that people are going to judge your creativity and call you a hack, or judge your spirituality and call you a fraud. I worry people are going to say you’re full of s**t and make fun of you, and then you’ll feel like even more of an outsider than you’ve already felt for most of your life. Always an orphan.

I’m afraid you’ll never create something you truly love. I push you to stop creating just so you won’t be disappointed by the outcome. I’m scared you’ll never be...

Time ran out. My fear, no doubt, could have gone on for hours.

Maybe your fear speaks a similar language?

Maybe you could relate to some of what my fear had to tell me?

I’ve allowed my fear to write me several letters since that day, sometimes surprised by, and always appreciative of what it needed to say. I’d given my fear so much power all my life without ever having really given it a clear voice, without ever having listened to the concern behind its demands.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t gotten along too well with your fear up to now. You two may spend a lot of time together, but I doubt you’re very friendly. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can create a different, gentler relationship with our fear, and by doing so we create a more fulfilling relationship with ourselves.

I’ve hated my fear for all the limitations it’s placed on my life. I’ve resented it for influencing my choices and pushing me to make cowardly decisions that have steered me away from rather than toward exciting possibilities and more meaningful realities. I’ve judged my fear a bully, a tyrant, the single greatest obstacle to my happiness. I had never considered that my fear cared about me or that it had always been, in fact, just trying to protect me, the only way it knew how. Don’t get me wrong. I still consider my fear a serious pain in the ass, but it no longer scares me the way it used to.

My fear is just a dummy most of the time. So is yours. It doesn’t mean to be, but it doesn’t know any better. Fear takes its job — to protect us — incredibly seriously, but it has no emotional intelligence with which to work. My fear wants to protect me from a difficult conversation with the same fervor it uses to keep me from sprinting into traffic. Fear can’t tell if it’s a mountain lion or a cute barista that has you all worked up. It deems anything uncomfortable as unsafe and, therefore, something to avoid. Rattlesnakes, job changes, new hairstyles — they’re all the same to fear: scary. So our fear ignites terror in our minds — a hellfire of what-ifs — to keep us safely in our comfort zones. More accurately, in its comfort zone. It’s not so much an enemy as an overprotective parent. And like any overprotective parent, fear has no intention of giving us our space.

I’ve long been a pro at being scared, and I’m finally becoming more expert at making brave choices, with the fear. When we recognize that our fear only wants to protect us, that it’s often a total dummy, and that it’s not going anywhere, we can begin to have different conversations with it. We can relate more openly to its needs, without sacrificing our own. I view my fear as an annoying five-year-old, tugging on my shirt and whining mostly nonsensical concerns at me all day. Instead of swearing at it, cowering in front of it, or warring with it, as I have all my life, I’ve taken to shooing my fear away. “Okay, okay, I heard you. Now go play in the corner or something.”

I loved what Rob Bell had to say about fear at the event in LA. When his fear plays out all the reasons he shouldn’t do what he’s thinking of doing and all the potential disasters, he simply nods his head and, with wonder and possibility, responds to his fear, “I know!” What a great response, right? He doesn’t ignore his fear, because that’s not possible. He acknowledges it with openness and acceptance of the many potential nightmares it proposes. Then he responds. His “I know!” is my “Okay, okay, I heard you. Now go play in the corner or something.”

I would love to be able to say that the more you face your fear, the less fear you’ll have to face. You may be lucky in that regard, but that hasn’t been the case for me. I’m still a big scaredy-cat. I push myself beyond my comfort zone often these days, and it continues to be frightening and uncomfortable. But certainly not impossible.

My fear has much less control over the choices I make than it’s ever had before, simply because I don’t give it the power I used to. I hear its concerns, and I shoo it away. I remind myself that it’s just trying to protect me but that it’s not very bright or insightful. I stay committed to befriending my fear, no matter what, the same way I seek to befriend all the parts of me.

That single letter I wrote from my fear that day with Liz and Rob opened me to the possibility of creating an entirely different relationship with my fear, and one that continues to create more peace and fulfillment in my life.

How was the experience for those of you who wrote the letter? Were you surprised by anything your fear had to tell you?

I mentioned I used this prompt in last month’s Writing Yourself workshop, and many of the attendees had an equally powerful experience with their letters. The prompts I offer are designed to awaken new perspectives within us, ways of relating to ourselves with more clarity, compassion and love. The discussion and sharing that happens in the group after each writing exercise makes the workshop particularly powerful and extra special.

I’m offering Writing Yourself again this Saturday, March 25th, live on Zoom, with all new prompts (so those of you who wrote your fear letter won’t have to do it again). If you resonated with the fear letter and want to spend a few hours with me and a group of open-hearted souls, writing from and into our hearts, then go here for more details.

Let’s not stop with our fear when we think about building friendship; let’s open to the possibility of friendship with all aspects of ourselves, even the difficult ones. Envy. Jealousy. Anger. Neediness. They’re all a part of being human. Let’s invite peace rather than war. Love rather than shame. Let’s decide that all our parts have a seat at the table, and give them as much grace as we can, even if sometimes we need to tell them, Okay okay, I heard you. Now go play in the corner of something.

Sending you all so much gratitude for being here, and endless love,

Scott

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A reminder that my good buddy and meditation master David Gandelman and I are leading a weeklong retreat called Live Your Truth, just outside of Barcelona in Spain. It’s focused on writing, meditation and breathwork, though you don’t need to have any experience with any of those practices. It’s going to be a powerful, healing week of self-exploration and deep, fun connection with a beautiful community of humans. Go here for more details.

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