A dive in fear! lessons learned from the field!

Olongway, Malawi

"Discovery is the privilege of a child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else" - Alexabder Grothendieck

Growing up we only learn to fear things, it will take you one time of touching the fire to recognize its pain, our memory of pain will never allow us to do it again! that;s not a choice, it is there in our subconscious mind!!! this is how we grow all of our fears in the life!

We only tend to cover our emotions with layers and layers to stop ourselves from recognizing the origin of these emotions. we tend to only focus on the outer shape of it! Fear is not bad! it is our mind mechanism of defense against pain, to keep us safe! it is what keeps all animals alive! But we need to understand how it works and how to deal with it! because if we don't it will simply stop us from trying again! in every time things get painful ... our brain will take the lead to record the situation and release the feeling of fear in every time the circumstances are similar! thats why it is always harder to retry things again! Our brain is well developed that it doesn't depend on only recording our experiences rather it records experiences of others, experiences we have seen, heard about or even imagined! " I am here, I am able to handle it in here, It might be a bit painful, but don't go there, you never know it might be even more painful!" - Mind talk. This is what creates our zone of comfort! the place that we dont want to leave no matter how does it feels. it is only like the government worker, for whom it is always the question why I should change things as long as it has been working this way for ages and still do, maybe not working in the best way but why to take the responsibility for a change that might work and might not work! let's leave it for another person to take the responsibility for it. That's what I have learned from canyoneering! It is that moment when you finish making your setup on top of an abseil, thread your device and get ready to take your cow tail off, the moment where your mind starts to question everything you have done "in your system/ life". it is that moment when something goes out of the planed track when your brain only try to shut you down to not to have to deal with it! Unfortunately -and this is only my thoughts- our subconscious memory for fear is much stronger than that for joy! I never noticed my mind working the opposite way, remembering how fun and enjoyable taking some of the risks in life and then working positively to push me to venture again! what i notice is only the opposite case! I am really interested to hear from you! your thoughts and your experiences! lets share it!!