If you’re like me, you’ve experienced the fear of looking like a total idiot.
It comes up when you’re about to stick your neck out for something you believe in. Or when you’re about to reveal a part of yourself for the first time. Or you’re about to launch a new project that you want badly to succeed.
It can happen at a gathering where you don’t know many people, and everyone seems so much cooler and more sophisticated than you.
This happened to me, years ago, at a beach party with some new friends. I was having a good time letting my hair down, cutting loose, and dancing, as they say, like no one was watching.
Suddenly, I was overcome by a wave of self-consciousness. I was sure that I looked ridiculous, and that the people around me were laughing at me behind my back.
Just as I was about to get sucked into a spiral of doubt and insecurity, I noticed something: Nobody was actually looking at me.
And then I realized: Everyone’s too caught up in their own inner drama to pay that much attention to me. And I relaxed.
I remind myself of that incident everytime my fear of looking dumb threatens to take me out.
Why am I sharing this? Because I want you to stop obsessing over whether you’re keeping up, or acting cool enough. Stop stressing about whether you’re “good enough” according to someone else’s standard.
Because A: they’re probably not paying that much attention. And B: It’s distracting you from the inner voice that is guiding you on your true path.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu God Krishna counsels Prince Arjuna, who is about to enter a battlefield.
Arjuna is overcome with doubt and fear. He is terrified of the possible consequences of the coming conflict.
Krishna reminds Arjuna that going into battle is the part he is destined to play, according to his sacred duty. Acting in accordance with his calling, without worrying about the result, is all that is required of him.
Attachment to outcome, or the paralysis of over-analyzing, is a trap. It’s a waste of your precious energy.
Here are Krishna’s words:
“It is better to strive in one’s own dharma (true nature) than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity”
If you struggle with comparing, keeping up, and trying to fit in, you’re not alone. Everyone experiences this. This is not a special problem which exempts you from following your inner calling. You don’t get a karmic hall pass, just because you’re scared.
I say this with love and empathy. I get scared too. And it helps me to remember that I’m here to play my part, nothing more. And I want you to get that too.
In the end, the question you will ask yourself is, did you do your best to live according to your true nature?
Don’t wait until the end – ask yourself that now. Do your best to live your truth, now. It’s all that is required of you.
Teray Garchitorena Kunishi, ND
Get in touch at http://www.deeplyhappy.com/contact/
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