We are hardwired to live in fear. Generations and generations have primed our bodies to stay vigilant and scan for threats. Fear has become so engrained in us that we overuse it, deploying our defenses when there is no threat in sight. We fear things like, getting yelled at for a mistake, because that happened to us when we were young or maybe we saw it in a movie. Or we fear that there won’t be enough food when we go out to dinner with friends, because we had to protect our plate when we growing up. Or that we will fall behind and be alone, because that happened to us once or maybe we witnessed it happen to someone else. It isn’t that these fears are not real, but it’s that we often create them based on past memories, rather than what’s happening right now.
We are also soft wired for love and when we go deep enough to investigate our wiring, we can rewire. We can chose to unplug our fear-based response and decide to look at what is unfolding in this moment instead. Like electrical circuits, the wiring is often complex, but if we focus on following each fear to its origin we can begin to identify where we need to rewire. And a helpful way to start is to say, “I’ve historically seen this with fear, how can I see this differently?”