Isn't Over-identifying "fears" Kind Of A Bad Neurotic Habit In And Of Itself

[Joseph Maynor]

Like.  Let's say you are procrastinating doing your work because you are spending time on here.  Well, there are two ways of looking at that.  One way of looking at it is I have a fear of doing my work and that's what is contributing to my motivation to procrastinate doing it.  The other way of looking at it is I'm on here instead of working because doing this is more important for me right now than working, and working can wait.  Alright!  Now, that's a totally different lens of looking at things, no?  Well, why are we privileging the "fear explanation" as a kind of default-position when we self-explain why we are not doing some task which we had scheduled?  Isn't that kind of fear-based thinking a paradigm, a choice we are making?  Isn't it non-positive thinking too?  Why are we doing that so much then?  Think about it. We're beating ourselves up with our theory of fears and how fears and motivation relate.  Are we a fly in that bottle too much?  What if you have a radically different theory of fear?  Like if you had never learned this stuff in the first place.  Would you be better off?  Would you self-sabotage less?

The Positive Psychologists amongst us are not gonna like this idea!  The fear theory is so entrenched, it is not?  We run that theory all the time when we think about motivation, don't we?  Like a computer executing a bit of code, we're programmed with it.  It's a default-position that almost everybody has assumed is reasonable to accept.

I just noticed this too.  It popped into my head because I'm doing positive thinking work right now.  I got Leo's Zen story ingrained in my mind lol.  Watch Leo's "Positive Thinking" video to find out what I'm talking about there.  It's unsettling some of my default-positions.  Or at least putting some in high-relief that I've never noticed before.  

What is fear anyway?  Maybe we have so many fears because we're looking for them all the time!  It's a self-fulfilling prophesy effect!  The law of attraction in action.  That's just a hypothesis.  Food for thought.  

I know you guys are probably like -- Get to work already Joe!  I am working.  Very much.  I'm synergizing with you guys on here.  I'm always working at something, it just might not be what is top priority for other reasons.  That's a different issue.  That's not laziness, and that's not fear.  It's more like a conflict of priorities, a conflict between the internal priorities and the external priorities.  A lack of synchronicity there.

I'm starting to wonder whether I "have" any fears at all now.  Damn!  What does it mean to have a fear anyway?  That seems kind of vague to me now, and I'm not sure what the hell it even refers to.  With the exception of actual primal fears, what does the proposition "I have a fear" even refer to?  Some suppressed entity in the murky "subconscious mind" (another fictional entity we made up)?  These made-up fears are not out in the open though.  Not like primal fears are.  They're always hiding somewhere, notice that!  It seems as though we took primal fears and then extrapolated-out a theory that added new types of fears to that set.  Like fears in complex-space for all you Math nerds out there!  (I was once one too .)  Imaginary fears.  I think we got imaginary fears folks!  Am I right?

 

Edited June 24, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor There's another perspective on this. We choose. Sometimes residual negative thinking fools us into thinking we're not fully choosing. Meditation stops all momentum. Then we regain the perspective that we are choosing.  The only way to increase suffering (fear in the mind) is to focus on it. Like you are doing with this post. How about a post on focusing on what you want?

[Joseph Maynor]

@Nahm I can choose to focus on positive things and go after those.  So you are a fan of law of attraction and positive thinking I assume?  

I am choosing to focus negatively.  That's so true.  And it's easy to not do it too.  You just need mindfulness on that issue and a reminder process to keep you on track.

You seem to believe in free choice and free will too, no?  I do too.  I don't think Leo does.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor Somebody punched me in the face, and I pondered how I attracted it. It's not so much that I believe in LOA, it's more like I tried blame, I played victim, tried the shit out of anger, I believed in luck & randomness, I got tired.  I paid decades for my stubbornness and resentment. All the majic started when I began to play the game of tracking everything back to me. I have a role in every system I observe.  I don't believe in free will, I'm just expressing it. I know there is anther level where we have no free will. I know. I've seen it for myself. But there is another level where there is only freedom, only expression of the one. The later changed my life. Kinda doubtful I could go back.