Tag: fear

What is the most difficult question to answer?

Posted on by philipdodson

The most difficult question to answer is one that we all seek to get the answer to in life. 

Will this work? Will it be successful? Will I……? Essentially, any question that involves anything beyond now.

The reason for that, is that ‘now’ exists, as the only time we know anything, as it is the only time we are alive and the only time we experience anything. When the future comes, it is now, always. But until it comes it is not real and therefore there can not be an answer. There is no future beyond our minds.

The lack of an answer is the challenge as it creates a psychological fear in us that we can not deal with. This leads to emotions such as worry, anxiety, apprehension, nervousness and so on, which in turn creates turbulence in the physical body and suffering in the mind.

The human mind thrives on black and white, it needs certainty and answers to save its poor little friend the ego from any risk to its existence.

We can not answer the question about the future and that is why it is the most difficult question and best left to never be asked.

A better question that we can answer and act on removing any fears is ‘What can I do now?’.

Do bad work

Posted on by philipdodson

Do bad work, it is the only way we get to good work.

If we are too frightened to do anything as we fear it will not be perfect, then we will never get to doing work that matters, we will never learn and improve, and we will never do even better.

We will hide behind perfection and fear, we will not show up and we will make excuses as to why we can not do.

Doing is a thing of this moment and it requires us to step away from thought, from the mind and its sabotaging fears. We have to be vulnerable enough to try and trying means we will not be sure of the outcome, so we just have to do and that will mean some bad work and that’s OK. When we do things that fail or are not right then we learn and we do even better next time.

If we keep doing the bad, then the good comes, if we never do the bad, we never get to the good. Being prepared to do without concern, means we will get better and better. We will overcome the fear of doing and that is the breakthrough, that is the key to unlocking our true potential to create our very best work.

Keep doing the bad work and being brave enough to share it. Sooner rather than later, we get to even better work. The more we keep going the even better the work gets. It removes the block, it takes away the fear and builds a habit of being vulnerable enough to share the best we can do right now. As we ship more and more of what we can do we learn and improve.

Or we can stay stuck with fear, too frightened to do and then we’ll never learn, we’ll just hide behind perfectionism and put our shields up to prevent any exposure to risk. We will not reach our true potential because we didn’t show, we didn’t take the plunge, we stayed safe and avoided uncertainty.

Bad is good.