since my childhood, I have been kind of a good child – being punctual always, completing class work/ homework on time, consciously not getting into fights with anyone, trying to be in the good books of everyone no matter how they treated me, etc.
while, this kind of behaviour helped me thrive until college, i could see it causing certain issues in my adult life. after dissecting this behaviour a bit, i realised this has majorly caused courage issues in me – where the consequence has been me concealing my emotions/ thoughts in certain situations where it is important to share them – basically, getting paralysed and not taking any action.
few days back, i was thinking about this issue and trying to understand why behind it. my theory is that – we all operate in a spectrum of being fearful and fearless. left most of the spectrum is being highly fearful and right most of the spectrum is being completely fearless. depending on different situations, we are somewhere in the spectrum. based on where we are on the spectrum, we decide whether we want to take an action or not (paralysed vs non-paralysed) – for example, being towards the left on the spectrum would lead to inaction and being towards the right would lead to action.
where we lie on this spectrum, i believe, depends on the intensity of the imaginary negative consequences we believe could happen after an action is taken – the higher the intensity, the closer we are to the left side, which then leads to inaction, which then leads to a lot of overthinking, which then can cause mental issues. in simple words, we live the after before and take/ do not take the action.
now i went a layer further to understand what causes me to create these imaginary negative consequences and in my experience these are created majorly by the current risk appetite i have, my similar past first-hand experiences and the secondary information i have about the action that i want to take.
for example, if i want to go for a walk on a road, i will not think about it too much and will just go and walk, even though the probability of getting hit by a vehicle is very high. but since in my past i have not been hit, i will not ruminate too much about this action. whereas, say i want to communicate my feelings to a girl whom i like, i will think too much about it because there have been no past experiences that have been similar to this situation and what will happen after the action is taken is completely unknown – hence, this fear makes me totally paralysed in this situation.
this means that for every type of action/ decision i want to take, there is an edge/ boundary that i create – the closer i am to the edge/ boundary or have crossed the boundary, higher the probability that i will take that action. and usually more past experiences and high risk appetite take me closer to the edge.
i also understand that for everything there will be a first time. in those situations to take the action, i am trying to inculcate a habit of first thinking objectively (and consciously not thinking only about the negative consequences), secondly trying to gather as much secondary information as i can and thirdly (and most importantly) listening to my inner voice whether the action that i am planning to take seems right or not. based on this, i will take the action, see what the effects are (both good and bad), learn from the situation and iterate my process of making decisions in future.
most of the time, taking this conscious approach doesn’t lead to inaction. i also understand that initially, there will be a lot of misses, but i am trying to consciously put myself in such uncomfortable situations to build the muscle of courage – the ability to feel the fear but not become paralysed.
azeem panjwani 