If there were any one emotion that held us back the most, preventing us from living life on our terms, it would be fear. We fear changing jobs, having difficult conversations, getting out of relationships, failing and starting over, and often just missing out. Alas, we fear success as well many times.
Do these things even make sense? Is the fear valid? Was this how the emotion was supposed to be from an evolutionary perspective? Fear, at its very primal, was meant for us to be safe (in a physical danger kind of way). To not go near predators, not jump from a cliff, to not get in a fight. Anyplace it could be life-threatening. That is what fear as an emotion tells us.
Modern society has become so safe that the threshold of fear we could experience has been reduced to the point it’s scary to speak to a stranger. Shouldn’t it feel scarier to drive a car in Mumbai than change jobs? Shouldn’t it feel scarier to use a knife than to miss out on a party? Don’t we need to recalibrate what is actually scary and what is only appearing so?