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Know your fears
Trust your instinct
Make good choices
-安天美
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Difficulties are things that show a person what they are - Epictetus, stoic philosopher.
Fear wears many disguises in our lives. Sometimes it arrives as hesitation before a crucial decision, other times as that tightness in your chest when facing uncertainty. Knowing your fears means more than simply naming them. It means understanding their roots, recognising when they're speaking, and acknowledging their presence without surrendering to their demands.
The courage to face our fears begins with this recognition. When we trace our anxieties back to their origins in childhood experiences, past disappointments, societal pressures, then we start to see them not as immutable truths but as stories we've inherited or created. These narratives may have served us once as protection, but now they may be confining us within boundaries too small for who we're becoming.
In the difficult work of naming our fears, we discover something remarkable: they lose some of their power in the light of our awareness. Like shadows that seem monstrous until we turn to face them, our fears often diminish when directly confronted. Not because they weren't real, but because our capacity to face them is greater than we imagined.
Beneath the noise of our thoughts runs a quieter current of knowing. Our instincts speak in sensations rather than sentences. It feels like a sudden certainty, an inexplicable hesitation, a feeling of resonance or discord. This wisdom doesn't argue or justify; it simply knows.
Trusting this inner compass requires us to listen differently. While our analytical mind demands evidence and guarantees, our intuition offers something more subtle like a direction rather than a destination. It doesn't promise safety, only authenticity. The practice of trusting ourselves happens in small moments first: choosing what genuinely nourishes us, setting boundaries that honour our needs, following curiosities that have no obvious payoff.
The paradox of intuition is that the more we trust it, the more trustworthy it becomes. Like a muscle strengthened through use, our inner knowing grows more reliable when we act upon it. Each time we honour that quiet voice, we attune ourselves more finely to its guidance, creating a virtuous cycle of alignment between what we sense and how we live.
Making good choices isn't about perfection. It's about how we approach decisions with full awareness, acknowledging both our fears and our intuition, we bring our whole selves to the moment of choice. This integration allows us to act not from habit or obligation, but from a place of centered intentionality.
Good choices arise from a willingness to pause. In that pause lies our freedom and opportunity to align our actions with our deepest values rather than reacting from conditioned patterns. This deliberate approach to choice-making becomes revolutionary in a culture that prizes speed and certainty over thoughtfulness and nuance.
The beauty of choice is that each decision becomes a step on our path of becoming. Even our missteps teach us [perhaps especially our missteps]. When we choose with awareness, we transform decision points from sources of anxiety into opportunities for growth. Each choice becomes both an expression of who we are and a creation of who we are becoming.
The more awareness we have of our orientation to fear, the more we can gain more agency over our lives and choices. Fear doesn’t have to limit you. - Evy Poumpouras
Throughout February's poems and reflections, from dream reality to magnetic presence, we've explored different facets of the same truth: our capacity for growth lies in embracing change, developing inner wisdom and authentically connecting with ourselves and the world.
We learn that true change comes from embracing life's natural rhythms and honouring our own pace of growth. Some days we will be challenged to move beyond our comfort zone and "lift heavy things" but we can transform raw emotion into tangible power. Other days the screens may project peace but it's important to trust our instincts to see reality bleed through. But now there's a difference in how we carry it. The hearts that once closed off can now allow people in and allow them to impact how we feel. As we close this month of reflections, let this meditation on growth and transformation stand as both ending and beginning.
To everyone reading these poems, may you find the courage to trust first, support creative people, and know your own strength emerges through embracing change and remaining open to life's influences.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Enduring Creations
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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Breaking Free
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you can read all 58 poems and reflections from January and February below. if any of these poems resonate with you, write me a cute note [[email protected]].
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Receive this special gift of music. I love FKA twigs!
https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/53ZuEngem601ygjQLAA9C5?utm_source=generator