Listen to this:
The closer we get to the thing we really want, the more resistance we will feel. We will feel some force pushing us away, the closer we get to some thing we think we really want. And for a lot of us that could be writing. Let’s be honest: it is not that hard to write. It’s not really that hard to type. It’s really hard to make something good when you’re writing.
It’s not that hard to do anything, really. But the problem is, if you start really, actually doing it instead of thinking about it, instead of, like, polishing your beret, if you actually start doing it? It’s scary. It’s scary - not to be a writer, anybody can call themselves a writer - it’s scary to write. And if you don’t believe that, ask yourself why so many people who try to do it all the time have such a problem sitting down and typing. And it’s not because typing is hard, it’s because getting close to that thing is scary.
Now is that related to fear of success? Maybe … because I think it still represents fear of change. People don’t like external stuff being forced on them, but they’re also not great at doing it themselves. Most of us tend to think that glass is always gonna be sitting there ready to have milk poured in it. Well, that glass is temporarily unbroken and your life is temporarily unbroken. So enjoy what it is for now, because change is not something that’s negotiable. And I think once you accept that, and once you accept the true, gut-wrenching scariness of the fact that you don’t have that much control over that much stuff, something like sitting down to write suddenly seems a lot easier than it used to.
The fear is what keeps us scurrying to familiar problems. I think most of us would rather have familiar fear than the potential of an alien anxiety. Fear is going, “There’s a bear out there!” And anxiety is going, “There might be a bear out there. Sometime.” Anxiety is based not in a thing that’s there right now and threatening you, it’s based on your own amount of reluctance to confront whether there really is something there. … When you fear fear itself then everything becomes scary because everything is alien, everything represents change, and everything represents a threat.
Right on target.
