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    How the Hebrew names for "fear" helped me find more courage

    6/18/2022

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    PicturePhoto by Designecologist on StockSnap
    I was unprepared for how the nearly infinite flatness of the Sacramento Valley would affect me the first time I saw it. 

    It was the summer of 2013 and I was on my way to visit my fiancée's (now husband's) family in his hometown of Davis for the first time. On both sides of I-80, we were flanked by fields filled with giant sunflowers, which were stunning.

    But it was the massive — and I mean enormous — blue sky that seemed to reach up into infinity that shocked me. It was so BIG. I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowed hard, then looked up at it again, my stomach almost sick from all that space. 

    My brain seemed to think that I would somehow become unstuck from gravity and float uncontrollably up into this vacuum of space, never to be seen again. I imagined that astronauts felt a similar sense of terror when they first step outside the safe confines of the space station for their first spacewalks.
    ​

    I am originally from northeastern Oklahoma — you know, "where the winds go whistlin' down the plains"? Wide-open spaces should not freak me out. But even Oklahoma has slightly rolling hills and trees and structures. 

    The Sacramento Valley didn't have any of this. 

    Given that I was about to meet my future in-laws for the first time (and all my fiancee's close high school friends), you'd think I would've been more worried about making a good impression than physically spinning off into space. 
    ​

    But no — it was those wide-open skies that invoked a type of fear I'd never before experienced.​


     

    Speaking of fear, one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books is Playing Big by Tara Mohr. It's about how women can stop playing small and start playing bigger in their careers. In Chapter 3, Mohr describes how she discovered that the Hebrew Bible lists two different words for fear: pachad and yirah.

    Pachad is" 'the fear of the phantom, the fear whose object is imagined.' Pachad is the overactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen, about the worst-case scenarios we imagine," said Mohr.

    Pachad keeps us playing small, from speaking up in meetings or inviting the new neighbor over to our messy house for coffee or drinks. 

    But there's a second kind of fear, known as yirah, which has three separate meanings:

    1. The feeling that overcomes us when we inhabit a larger space than we are used to.
    2. The feeling we experience when we suddenly come into possession of considerable more energy than we had before.
    3. What we feel in the presence of the divine. 

    Mohr says this is our fear of stepping into our true power. It's when we're scared of taking on a social issue that we're passionate about, starting a new business or applying for a new job. It's also the fear that, just maybe, you'll be wildly successful and that success will threaten your sense of self, or even worse, make others uncomfortable. Huh.

    Once I knew there were two kinds of fear, I could start to check in with myself whenever I sensed internal resistance.

    "Is this yira?" — the irrational fear of the unknown, the proverbial monster under the bed, I would ask myself. "Or is it pachad?" -- the feeling of new energy coursing through me that I wasn't exactly sure how to handle.

    Yira was the feeling I had when I hit send on this newsletter a couple of weeks ago, reaching out to women I hadn't contacted in over four years. Pachad is the feeling I have as I'm writing these words right now. They feel powerful but also a little overwhelming—big energy.

    And when I think about it, the feeling of writing these words is not all that different from that highway in central California. The sky was endless, but then so was the potential.

    Pachad often leads us astray. But yira leads us to who we are meant to be.
    ​
    Which one are you feeling?
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      Jill Hinton Wolfe,

      Chief Heroine

      I love helping women discover their inner heroines.

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      Jill's books

      Kindle Bestseller Publishing: Write a Bestseller in 30 Days!
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      This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life
      Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel
      Educated
      Summary of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: by Mark Manson | Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis


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