Marty I
Facing the Fear of Living Fully

He didn’t know when, but at some point the very thing that was most true & real in him became the thing he was most scared to live for.

There is a quote attributed to Joseph Campbell: “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”. When I met Marty, it was clear to me that he contained numerous, unexplored caves that held promises of vast treasures. I knew this because Marty was acutely bereft of Aliveness. He was profoundly unhappy…an unhappiness touched with top notes of hesitation, avoidance, and victim-blaming, underlayed by subtler but more essential flavors of fear and self-doubt.

Anytime Marty got close to taking a definitive step that might bring him closer to his personal treasure, he would derail. He would zone out, create distractions, get overwhelmed, or even begin to doubt his goals. In the vacuum this created, he would inevitably reach for something predictable, something comforting, something that would stabilize the status quo. And while this strategy would create short-term relief, it always eventually amplified his underlying anxiety and unhappiness. This pattern had been going on for years when I met Marty.

As we began to work together, I trained Marty to stay in open-Hearted feeling while encountering his reflexive derailing behaviors (instead of the tendency to leave for self-judgement or self-justification). I wanted him to ‘meet’ himself in this place, in a more conscious and embodied way. As he started to be able to do this, he confronted a thick initial layer of negative, nihilistic story-telling, centered around a core belief that “going after my dreams is going to fail anyway, so it’s foolish to try”. This was where Marty had a deep-seated safety program of giving himself up to an outdated and unserving belief, sourced from previous painful experiences of trying & failing, and of being criticized & shamed for taking these risks.

And this was exactly where Marty had to put in the hard work, developing his capacity to commit in his Heart to what he genuinely wanted before & beyond the seductive pull of his old belief structures. This intentional act of committing was both intensely scary & uncomfortable for him, but by degrees something he was able to accomplish. Marty started to have a functional relationship with how truly scary it is to be Alive and long for Life…but also how truly enlivening it is to embrace & embody this longing.

Bit by bit, his wholehearted reclaiming of this core truth about himself began to manifest in many ways: as self-enjoyment, as unforced motivation, as boldness of action, as self-confidence, as consistent daily energy, and as kindness & resilience when his bold actions would meet with temporary failure (growth). All of these qualities steadily coalesced into concrete opportunities, into establishing strategic connections & relationships, and ultimately, into landing a career-changing dream job with a cutting-edge company in an exciting emerging field.

And while ‘landing the dream job’ is typically seen as the ‘big ticket items’ in our minds, the actual cause of all this was the development of Marty’s ability to claim & embody his true desires beyond what his safety stories were seductively selling him. It is this inner journeying that creates the possibility of outer transformation. This is what Choosing Life really means–choosing oneself, wholeheartedly.

And so while Marty won a new community of allies and a new job, what he really won was himself–enthusiastically Alive…an Aliveness that will continue to yield treasure far beyond the bounds of this current stage of his life.

Life is not what you have, it is what you are. Taking the journey necessary to discern this difference is what determines how Intimate, Vital, & Blessed your experience of your Life will be.

Choose Life addresses your relationship with Vulnerable Honesty, with your capacity for Self-Acceptance, and with your willingness to let Life grow you beyond what you can intellectually predict or control.