Welcome to July: a new month and a new theme Nighty Night. Our oil is Juniper, the oil of the night, which will lead us to look both sides of ourselves: the dark and the light, and take the opportunity to look into what we fear in both ourselves and the outside world, and then face it. Our both is Grit by Andrea Duckworth, so she will help us look at how we can dig within to overcome our uncertainties and to stay the course. It’s going to be an exciting month, where we will create the space to get very real.

First of all, let’s define fear. The dictionary calls it: an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm. Some people also like to use FEAR as an acronym, where they say it is: False Evidence Appearing Real. What we would love you to remember here is that fear is largely a future paced-emotion, as in, it’s not really something you can experience in the moment. So we might even want to call in: Future Expectations Appearing Real. We have even heard of people changing it to a positive and defining it as: Face Everything And Rise. (We wish we could claim that we made that last one up).

In light of that, we would love you to have a think about the word fear. How do you define it, and what does the very word mean to you? Have you used ‘fear’ to hold you back from the life you really want to live, or do you even let fear run your life at times? 

We do know that that word fear gets bandied about a lot and blamed for a lot of things, fear of failure being a big one that springs to mind. If you notice yourself saying that one, it might be fun to pull it apart a little and think on what you are truly fearful of there. Is it the judgments of others (which will then also be your own judgements, hello there mirror), an inability to learn something new, or a reluctance to use challenges as opportunities to expand? Or is it something completely different for you? Whatever it might be, that little story will be creating speed bumps in your life, so it might be fun to smooth that road out a little and make your trip easier. (Unless of course you prefer the bumpy ride).

As this month of Nighty Night plays out, we will be looking at all of the ways we let fear into our lives, and the way so many of our fears play out when we are stressed or vulnerable. Nighttimes are often when we are alone with our thoughts (or our dreams) and where we have the opportunity to explore our most inner desires and foibles. There is a famous poem by Dylan Thomas that reminds us to “not go gentle into that good night”, reminding us that our final death is inevitable, but we want to live vibrantly and never give up. 

This week we would love you to sit with your fears for a moment. We all have some kind of monster under our bed, and the sooner we shine the light under there, the sooner we can name it, look it in the eye and dismantle it. You might even find out that it’s just a couple of neglected dust bunnies and your imagination. Take some time today to write a list: on the left side of your page write down all of the things you want for your life, both big and small. On the right, write down what fear stops you from having that right now. It could be money, time, expectations, lack of information or skills… whatever. 

Go on, take a peek a the monster. We promise it won’t bite.