#growth ##### There is No Courage Without Fear It is impossible to be courageous without being afraid. {todo: write a story here. ask my dad!} The two cannot exist without each other. This is true of all emotions, all behavior. It is the contrast that makes them wonderful. Recognizing this is critical, because it is what allows us to enjoy the rollercoaster. There is both something that feels great to _feel_, and there is a sense of anticipation of coming out the other side. Both of these are powerful emotions. Imagine a world where everything is great and joyous, all the time. Every moment is good, happy. ... How do you feel about that? ... Stagnant. Boring. Lifeless. That's how I feel. We need the opposite in order to feel anything, in order to be anything. Confidence in the face of insecurity Courage in the face of fear Intensity in contrast to serenity Connection in the face of loneliness Liveliness in contrast to solitude And the key is that we cannot have one without the other inside ourselves. It is our flaws that reveal our strengths. But it's more than that. If the people around us don't understand our fears and insecurities, they can't understand our courage and confidence. That said, we don't always have to say our fears and insecurities out loud. People can sense them without them needing to be discussed, and even if they don't fully understand our fears and insecurities, they can see the courage and the confidence. Escapism gives us contrast, but not in our own lives. It is fake, and we live in a different reality when we can't handle the one we are in now, or when we don't want to worry about it. When this reality is too much to think about or too discouraging, or when we just need a break, we turn to escapism to give ourselves a break. ##### Everything in life is a duality: the ying and yang This is something I've come to embrace because it drastically alleviates the stress of needing to be good at everything. In a world where we are constantly told how to be better, there is a relief in knowing that there is a bound on how good we can be at all things at once. The _duality of things_ is my relief to that stress. It turns out that unless we have dissociative multiple personality disorder, it is completely impossible to be able to switch contexts rapidly enough to be able to perfectly handle every situation that comes at us. ##### A Quick Example There are strengths and weaknesses to every skill and every personality trait, and each end of the spectrum will excel in different situations. We can love our kids to death (and that's obviously the right thing to do) but by doing so we will not be preparing them for a world in which they are not loved. Everything is a balance, and no one person can be expected to perform perfectly in every situation simply because we are all different people with skills and personality traits that fall all over an undefinable [[Radar Charts are Awesome|radar chart]]. ##### Accepting Myself One consequence of understanding this duality is that not only is it impossible to be good at everything, it is _desirable_ to be bad at some things in order to be good at others. In some weird way that I don't have the words for right now, this allows me to be proud of the things I'm good at, while also forgiving of the things I'm bad at. It's the best of both worlds! Here is Brian Johnson explaining this: ![[M7 Celebrate - Accept your whole self.mp4]]