Be Fit Fit: The Good Fear

We associate fear with the bad stuff: anxious responses, elevated blood pressure and heartbeat... So - can it be good? Yes!

Take as an example the common fear which I experienced in the past and many of my fitness Clients experience repeatedly: the fear of setting the goal to lose weight. Because… what if I don’t manage to achieve that goal? What would “they” think of me? You feel that it is maybe better not to set that goal because if you don’t set it, you will never fail achieving it. A Catch-22 or, truly, a simple fear of being judged? At the same time, the same fear can motivate you to go for that weight loss goal, achieve it no matter what, and prove “them” wrong!

Fears can be overcome. Some of us prefer to overcome them step by step. Some choose to overcome them in one bigger step which sets us for success forever ever after. I remember my fear of sheer cliff drops. I still experience it sometimes. Back in the days, I decided to overcome that by one swift and decisive step of tandem jumping from a plane. Sort of does not make sense, because when you plan to overcome your fears, first, you want to sit down and write the worst-case scenario to lessen the impact of that same fear. So, back then, I sat down and wrote that, well, the parachute might not open, or I might die of a heart attack, or my tandem instructor might be having his worst day after a sleepless night and forget to launch the chute, and so on… To the point that I abandoned writing the list of my worst-case scenario, because the outcomes did not feel very soothing, nor they sounded promising at all!

Instead, I simply decided to sign up for a jump and do it. Signing up made me itchy. Don’t ask me about the night before… My ex refused to even wake up and go with me to the airport, likely, thinking that I lost my mind (this is why they become exes). FYI: He was still deep asleep when I got back from that airport. So, following a stressful night full of self-inflicted thinking that it was the last one, I drove myself to that airport. Faked to be more relaxed than I was. After fifteen painful minutes of watching an obligatory movie addressing the fact that “there are many safer ways of evacuating yourself from a plane than tandem jumping”, I signed my life off and underwent a hands-on briefing on how to jump without being decapitated by the wing of the plane in motion. Then, I went on that Cessna, sat there on the floor with my jumping guru, and, well, jumped… And survived, as I am writing this now, years later!

Whichever is the way you choose to overcome your personal fears, fitness-related or not, please see the power in the process. You can do it!

Magdalena Romanska, Ph.D., is the owner of the Be Fit Fit Personal Training Studio (www.befitfit.biz) and the Top 3% Chairman’s Board Realtor® at the Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International in Sedona. Visit her “Be Fit Fit” blog at verdenews.com.