Surfing the Fear

I read some work by author Pamela Slim recently, and she described her approach to adversity as “surfing the fear.”

If you scroll through social media enough, you’ll see posts telling you to crush the fear, stomp on it, destroy it with your fierce determination. But research tells us that a better approach is to notice it and process it (that’s why our brains let us know about it in the first place).

What we feel, we can heal.

Noticing and sitting with our feelings of fear lets us view adversity as a time for growth. Life brings us unexpected things, and it’s ok to feel the pain of that a bit, comfort yourself, and move into the growth it can bring.

Riding the waves

Losing my parents shook my world when it happened, but it was through the processing of their deaths that I realized starting my own business was the way to go for me. And when I lost my best friend unexpectedly in February, I began another period of soul searching and am discovering even more about my purpose and meaning in this life.

Let go and take the waves as they come

Try as we might, we don’t have full certainty about how things are going to go from day to day. I think that’s why the image of surfing is so helpful. You let go and take the waves as they come, processing the best way to ride them. Wiping out is part of the learning process, but if we never get on the board, we miss the beautiful, complex experience that is life (and fear).