Thursday 18 March 2010

Fear and protection

All of us have developed a front stage- a version of ourselves that we present to the world. ... Now, of course, in order to do this, we have to hide lots of things about ourselves away. ... All these things that I cannot risk bringing out onto my front stage I have to put somewhere- so I put them in my back stage. My back stage is the place I learn to put things that I do not want people to see. http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/let-us-go-back-to-old-story-one-of.html
I may be preempting what Simon Walker is going to say, but I think the problem comes when we put things back stage (which he writes more about in the Undefended Leader) because of irrational fear.  And of course if we never bring them out then the fear of bringing them out grows and we are even less inclined to do so.  How do we crack this problem?  Of course one option is to "Feel the fear and do it anyway" (I haven't got round to reading the book, but it is a great title!), but what if we do that and it goes wrong?  Is there a gentle toe in the water approach to this or do we have to dive in, because there has to be a certain degree of fear to overcome to be of value?

I was talking with a friend who said that whenever they saw a rule they broke it to see what happened, whereas my approach is to keep it unless I have a reason not to.  Acclimatisation to dealing with things like this mean that we have different attitudes towards fear - I do not know what it is to break the small rules - so the big ones carry greater fear.  Perhaps I need to dip my toe in the water more and walk on the not to be walked upon grass!

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