Fear

I grew up in a very strict, Christian denomination that preached “money is the root of all evil.” I left the church eons ago and have since been on my own journey of discovery. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that it is fear, not money, at the root of evil. You see, fear has countless manifestations. It can show up as judgement, as rudeness, as vanity, as prejudice, as greed. It can cause you to do something you really don’t want to do and to not do something you really do want to do. Fear can be a very powerful thing.

Over the years, I have definitely “felt the fear and done it anyway”— from quitting jobs that didn’t serve me, even though I had nothing lined up to replace them, to packing up and moving to a new city (or country) with only the contents of my car. Doing that sort of thing is certainly scary, but I moved with confidence, knowing it was the right thing for me to do. For some reason, though, that confidence didn’t follow me in all areas of my life.

As a singer, I’ve come to appreciate a certain level of fear. Getting on a stage and pouring your heart out to strangers is scary. But I push through that fear and accept what happens next. Until I don’t. When I left the full-time stage to become a fundraiser, I became more and more fearful of performing. Every time I got the opportunity to sing a concert or in a show, I would get ill. My fear of failure— fear that I hadn’t dedicated enough time to practice, fear that the audience would pick up on the fact that I was not as good a singer as I once was, or fear that they would see me as the “side gig” singer I had become— all manifested physically. My body would literally break down from the fear and my performances suffered, which made me even more fearful of the next opportunity. It was a vicious, vicious cycle.

It took me a good five years to recognize the correlation between my fear and my performance. Once I finally figured it out, I had to retrain my mind. Every time I had a fearful thought, I replaced it with a positive, confirming one. It took another year or so, but I was finally able to sing freely again. That said, when I moved to Germany and started singing genres outside of the classical realm, some of those fears returned. I was being paid to sing gospel and funk and pop— genres, of course, I listened to but had never sung professionally. Fear manifested in me as doubt. Can I really do this? Will they see straight through me and think I’m just faking it? Even though I had been hired and re-hired, these fears crept in. And once again, it started to affect my performance. Thankfully, it didn’t take me five years to figure out what was happening, and I was able to fix it, almost immediately.

Fear is real, but it only has the power we give it. We have the great opportunity to tell it to fuck off. This skill, however— telling fear to fuck off— is one that must be practiced. It doesn’t just happen because you have an epiphany about it. You’ve been giving in to fear for 20 years; you can’t expect to undo that in five minutes. Start small. For example, it can be scary to walk up to someone you don’t know and introduce yourself. Feel that fear, then tell it to “fuck off,” and start stepping. That small act (which I acknowledge is not actually small at all), will prepare you to feel stronger fears— perhaps one that has higher stakes— and work towards a new response.

I’ve spoken about fear in the “scary” sense, but remember that fear isn’t just a “scared” feeling. The next time you find yourself judging someone (or yourself), stop and think about the source of that judgement. The next time you meet someone who is full of themselves, just know that it is a manifestation of some kind of fear. When you find yourself not purchasing something you really want— ask yourself if you really can’t afford it at the moment, or if you’re fearful that you won’t get any more money. Don’t allow fear to dictate how you move throughout this world. You can’t stop fear from appearing in your life, but you can learn to deal with it. It’s a never-ending process, I’m afraid. But, I’m pretty sure it’s worth it.

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[Photo: @nadineshaabana]