Tara Brach - Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO - There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the archives). Note – This talk is dedicated to Tim Ferriss, who turned me on to the phrase FOMO. Tim exemplifies the creative aliveness of FOMO energy when it's living through someone who's dedicated to being awake, caring and real. Check out his podcasted interview with Tara at: https://youtu.be/pXNEM4wjSmE and his podcast at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I'd like to start with a poem from the poet Rumi. This is how a human being can change. There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly he wakes up, call it grace, whatever. Something wakes him and he's no longer a worm. He's the entire vineyard and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, the growing wisdom and joy that doesn't need to devour. This is how a human being can change. This is a verse or poem about really the evolution of consciousness and this shifting from a separate self that out of fear and grasping is kind of addicted habitual.

and to that realization of connection and oneness that allows us to really live from a place of love and wisdom. What I'd like to do during this class is first ask you the question, really, what is between me and that sense of that wholeness, that growing wisdom and joy? just to sense what is between me and that experience. And then to really look at two areas that many of us land on that seem to run interference, two areas of fear where we might say we're stuck as that worm that's kind of addicted to the grape leaves. And then just to explore how meditation can be this evolutionary strategy that allows for grace, that allows us to wake up.

And to begin with, just to say, it's totally natural that we go through a phase of being the worm eating grape leaves. I mean, that's just part of evolution too. And I don't know how many of you either had the hungry caterpillar read to you or read it to your children

or reading it to your grandchildren. How many? Hungry caterpillar. So that's like a good 90% of us, which is a story of a hungry caterpillar that each day is eating more and more food and the food's beautiful, like all these different kinds of fruits and vegetation, and there's nothing wrong with it. And at some point he gets really big and full,

and he creates a cocoon, and there's a kind of stillness, and then va-voom, you know, he's transformed. There's the metamorphosis into that freedom of a butterfly. And so it is with us that we too are designed to get, caught and eat and consume and build that sense of self and so on. And we're designed to go, oh, okay, enough, let's get still and then go through another adaptation or evolutionary change. There's a story I heard a long time ago. This was one of my father's favorites. And Norman

and Irv are life friends and they have a shared interest in the esoteric and and consciousness and what happens after we die. So they make a deal that whoever dies first is going to contact of the one that's still alive from the afterworld. And so Irv dies and Norman doesn't hear from him for about a year and figures, well, there's just no afterlife. But one day he gets a call and it's Irv. Oh, so there's an afterlife. What's it like, Norman asks?

Well, the response is this. He goes, well, I sleep very late. I get up, I have a big breakfast, then I have sex, lots of sex. Then I go back to sleep, but I get up for lunch, have a big lunch, have more sex, take a nap, huge dinner, more sex, go to sleep, wake up the next day. Oh my God, says Norman. So that's what heaven's like? Oh no, Suserve, I'm not in heaven. I'm a moose in Wyoming. My father gave me the sense for the strange and jokes. So our evolutionary potential, this is one version, but it's generally to have us keep unfolding into wider and wider and more inclusive sense of who we are, beyond a sense of a separate self.

And you can see in the triune brain that, you know, there's the reptilian brain, and that's one level of an organism feeling separate and trying to make sure nothing's going to harm it. And then there's the mammalian brain where it's expanding more and going for reward and satisfaction and gratification and nourishment. And then there's the primate that's going for attachment and connection and to the human ego that has all these mental ways of creating a whole story about the world. And that's not the end of the trip. There's more.

So what's happened in the last 75,000 to 100,000 years is we've kind of been in an evolutionary spurt. The primate brain, the prefrontal cortex, has developed this kind of whole, network of circuits of neurons that jump around that create the experience of compassion and empathy and mindfulness. And it's sometimes called the compassion circuitry and the mirror neurons are one element of it.

But when this started developing in the brain, human evolution went into hyperdrive. And it's over that last 100,000 years that language and collaboration and tools all became activated. So empathy is the pre-reflective capacity to know what others are intending and feeling. And we're developing that capacity more and more. I mean, evolution selected for mirror neurons. Okay? It's part of what we're becoming. It's advantageous in terms of experiencing relatedness and interconnection for us to not only survive but to flourish. And then we have this capacity for self-reflection, for mindfulness. So we actually have the wiring to recognize what we are beyond a separate self,

this kind of enlarged sense of being, a more formless quality of presence. And that's what Rumi was pointing to. That grace that lets us realize we're beyond the worm, where the vineyard and the orchard and a growing wisdom and joy. So this is really the hope of the planet, this evolving sense of what we are beyond a separate self, because then we move from fight, flight, freeze to the attending and befriending that can actually help take us past, making war on each other and destroying the earth. Now, there are two clusters of fears and wants that are very common ones,

when they're activated, this more recently evolved part of our brain that lets us feel empathy and be mindful gets cut off. It gets deactivated. And you might consider these two clusters as the cluster that says, oops, something's wrong. Something's wrong right now. We're about to go wrong. And the other cluster saying, something's missing. I need something more. They both have each other embedded in it, but you can sense these especially in our ego self

as two kind of distinctive versions of when we get more small and cut off. So the first one is a fear of failure. And you might also consider it a fear of deficiency

of being not enough and of rejection. So that's fear of failure faf the second one is a fear of missing out fomo okay fop and fombo and i'm in a way dedicating this talk to tim ferris who a number of you probably heard of who does a wonderful podcast and he was the one that turned me on to the word fomo because he we had an interview and i learned a lot from him in our interview and fomo was one of my takeaways fear of missing out. And when we're caught in FOMO, we're not as concerned about failure deficiency. That's actually a more primitive part of the brain. We're really concerned with missing out on opportunities for pleasure,

for gratification, for more fame or accomplishment or fulfillment of whatever we're seeking. So we're going to take these and look at them, each one. I'm going to invite you to sense how these are living in you. And then we're going to look at how meditation, can be a strategy to evolve us so we're not caught in them so we can take the energies in them that are really wise and alive but not be caught in them. Okay, so Faf, fear of failure and fear of deficiency. It was really brought to my mind last week

when I was talking to a friend who says, you know, I've really gotten to the root of what's going on for me, which is I just feel like around the corner I'm going to fail. It's like I won't be prepared. that I'm just going to fall short. And it could have to do with anything, whether it's letting down my daughters or my partner or my friends. And when we talked about it,

underneath is just a sense of shame and a sense of isolation. But there's many versions. I've known many that are people that are in the public eye, people that are really well-known, that have what's called imposter syndrome, which is a version of Faf, which is, you know, I look good, I sound good, other people have bought in but they'll find out because underneath something's wrong and I'm going to fail.

The fear of failure is rooted deep in the reptilian brain. It's like that basic part of us that wants to avoid harm. So it's very primal. It's the primal fear of the separate self. I'm going to fail. It's not going to be okay. I'm going to be annihilated. Now, for primates, when it doesn't, if a primates not involved with a life-death issue, the default position of the mind is to compare to others. So what that means is I'm going to lose respect and love. That's the form of death.

I'm not enough and... What primates do is they see where they are in the pecking order, right? Are they going to be part of the herd or are they going to be left out? And of course some cultures make it even more acute. If you're part of a culture that's always raiding you for, you know, in school for how well you do or for your, you know, for your intelligence or what kind of intelligence you have or your looks, if you're being raided, you're going to, underneath there's going to be an insecurity.

I was thinking about children a lot with this and how our schools. and our education does breed in the fear of failure and has kids trying to prove that they know things. We grow up trying to show that we're smarter than we are. There's a big incentive to convincing people. I saw a test for children. It says, name six animals which live specifically in the Arctic. And here's the child's answer.

Two polar bears and then three, and that's crossed off, four seals. I thought that was a great answer. What was Sir Walter Raleigh famous for? He is a noted figure in history because he invented cigarettes and started a craze for bicycles. What happens during puberty to a boy? He says goodbye to his childhood and enters adultery. I'll just give you one more. What is a vibration?

Well, there are good vibrations and bad vibrations. Good vibrations were discovered in the 1960s. So the fear of failure, Faf, has all sorts of expressions and subsets. I was talking to my husband, Jonathan, about it. You know, what's your version? And he said, well, I'm phobai. And I said, hi. He goes, fear of being included.

So we all have them. So what happens is that when we have this some fear of deficiency or failure, our sense of who we are gets organized around it. And we develop strategies to try to compensate for it or cover it up. And those strategies you're familiar with. I mean, we've explored this before many times in the talks I've given, ways that we try to prove ourselves or get approval or pretend, as I've mentioned. But the strategies and the feeling tone become a real core sense of,

oh, so this is what I am. And when we're in that cocoon of the ego self that feels deficient or defective and is addicted to eating the leaves, is trying to find ways to prove ourselves, because that's the addiction, to prove and get approval, we're caught off

from those parts of our brain and our consciousness, really, that have a larger sense of belonging. So let's take a pause here. I'm just going to invite you to check in and see how you might be experiencing in your life this one cluster of fears, fear of failure, just to investigate it a little. The first step of widening your identity not being caught in the cocoon of fear is to just investigate, just to notice it, witness it. So you might bear witness without judgment and just ask yourself, so where do I become

afraid of falling short? Is it in work? Is it in certain relationships? Is there a fear of making the kind of mistake that will have you lose people's respect or love? If there's one situation that's a good example for you where you anticipate failure or you habitually run into the fear of failure or the fear of rejection? Take a moment to let yourself go inside it a bit, the kind of thoughts that go on, what you

believe or anticipates going to happen that's wrong and bad, what are your strategies for trying to protect yourself? Just notice how fear of failure or fear of rejection lives in your body or your heart. As part of witnessing it, sense that this is a isn't so much my fear is the fear. This is one of the arctypal, universal human fears. So you are bearing witness to what it's like when the human self is caught in that particular cocoon. The mind gets narrowed and the body gets contracted and see if you can just witness with kindness. This is the fear of failure, this is what it's like.

And if you get familiar with that, then you can begin to take the steps to extricate, to loosen, to wake up out of. So continuing to explore these, we're going to now look at the fear of missing out, FOMO. And that really comes from the mammalian brain, this primal urge to thrive. And it's the urge and the emotions that are trying to seek nourishment and enhancement and reward. So just to say, it's not as primitive as fear of failure.

In other words, if you're caught in fear of failure, Faf, that trumps FOMO. That will grab your attention. So that can't be as prominent for FOMO to really set in. So I could see it in my dog. I was thinking about it this morning, how I wake up, and she is eagerly tracking my every movement because she doesn't want to miss out on our walk. And even if there's some time after I get up before the walk, and she could go outside and she could be enjoying things.

She stays riveted because she's afraid of missing out. She's anticipating pleasure, but she's got the stress of not getting. So she can't just relax and enjoy her moments. And that to me is the same idea that we get anxious about getting and achieving what we want. And the anxiety is it matters to us and we might not get it. We might miss out on perhaps the fame,

the fame that's possible or the money or often it's having peak experiences, just wanting to live fully. But sometimes it's the fear of missing out on a new technology or the deepest spiritual teachings, missing out on a trick to reverse balding or to live longer, whatever it is. It's like this fear that we're going to miss the boat. And depending on the degree of our unmet needs, in other words, the degree of not maybe to the degree we haven't gotten the gratification or recognition that we want, it intensifies the tension of FOMO. There's more of a fear that we're going to miss out on something.

And it's interesting that with each of these clusters of fears, there are certain neurotransmitters that are particularly related to them. So that with the fear of missing out, there's more dopamine that's involved. There's dopamine, which is anticipating pleasure and novelty. So there may be that you have a certain cocktail or mix in your body of dopamine. There's neuropinephrine which is the pleasure and reward dependence system. These are different accesses. We each have a mix of neurotransmitters that in a way it's like we're born with them and they can be affected by how we pay attention and how we live. So we might at some point I was thinking how you could have it included in your personals.

You know, here's my particular neurochemical mix. Oh, Mary is mid-dopamine, high in serotonin, high in estrogen. And that gives you a sense of, oh, yeah, right, that's what Mary is like. Well, so it is. We have our mixes. So what happens when we're caught in the grasping of FOMO, where we're addicted to the grape leaves, is that our vision gets smaller.

The aperture gets smaller. We don't remember the rest of the world so much because our attention gets very fixated. A mother was preparing pancakes for her son's Kevin, 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. So the mother saw an opportunity for a moral lesson to broaden their view. She said, if Jesus was sitting here, he'd say, let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait. So Kevin turned to his younger brother

and said, Ryan, you can have the first chance at being Jesus. So when we're caught in FOMO, there's this, we get very strategic and sometimes manipulative and very fixated. There's an ambitiousness about getting what we want and overdoing and overconsuming, always trying to get more experience, more life, get it right. There's an essay, I've always loved to. about because everybody's always trying to get the final word on nutrition. So in this one, the Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks and the British or Americans. The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Brits of the Yanks.

Now, the Italians drink huge amounts of red wine and they also suffer fewer heart attacks than the above. The Germans drink a lot of beer. Well, it goes on and on and on. The conclusion, eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you. So in both of these clusters of fear, we're talking about a kind of evolutionary process where there's a fear, there's a wanting, and when we get fixated, we get into a kind of cocoon where we haven't, we're not, we're cut off from really being all that we can be. For FOMO, I think one of the most potent expressions comes from the teachings of Kashmir Shavayism, which says, first there's the suffering of separation, then the suffering of not enough,

then the urge to have to do something to be complete. So the suffering is this, when we're caught in the feeling of, I'm about to miss out on something, I need something more, It means that we can't really open to and embody and live the fullness of what's right here. It cuts us off from the present moment. Why? We take a moment to reflect on FOMO to see where it lives for you. So you might ask yourself, what is it you're really wanting or feeling compelled toward

that you're anxious about not getting? Maybe some special opportunity that you'll miss. It might be an opportunity for a new role at work or for an investment that could really bear fruit, opportunity to have involvement with certain people you value to be included in some social situation that matters, an opportunity to work with a certain teacher or trainer. Maybe your fear of missing out, a deep one of, I don't want to miss out in having children or having a romantic relationship. Or maybe it's something to do with your youth.

I don't want to miss out on something to do with having my body be able to do certain things. Wherever you feel that sense of fear of missing out, that kind of anxiety and kind of grasping towards that narrowing or fixating, let yourself go inside it. And just get familiar with it in a very bodily way. What does your heart feel like when you're caught in phomo? It's your mind like, your body like. And like the fear of failure, just widen enough to remember that this isn't not your fear

of missing out, it's the fear of missing out. It's part of the mammalian brain to seek gratification, to want to make sure to get rewards, and you're bearing witness to how this human self is when caught in this conditioning. bring some kindness to it. Now here's the important thing to know about working with Fof and FOMO. And that is that while each of them has the kind of conditioning that if we get caught in it, it keeps us small, it keeps us from really evolving and experiencing our full potential. Each is also a portal that if we deepen our attention actually brings alive that potential.

that if we deepen our attention when we're caught in the fear of failure, when we're caught in that fear of rejection, of missing out, not of missing out in the sense of fear of missing out, but of getting cut off from what we love, the life we love, the more we deepen attention to it, the more we discover a kind of timeless belonging that takes us beyond that fear. And with FOMO, the more we get in time,

with that fear of missing out and that wanting for gratification, the more we discover that what we wanted is always here and we tap into an absolute infinite flow of creativity, of dynamism. So let me just bring this, ground this a little in a few examples. One woman I was working with that was dealing with the fear of failure, this was at a retreat on the West coast and this is an African-American woman at a, it was a month-long retreat, so it was a real intensive one.

And she was encountering a lot of fear and insecurity about falling short, about rejection from those really not feeling intimate and connect with those she loved being rejected. And she was being really, really brave and we'd worked together and she would

contact it fully because the basics of meditation have two pieces. One is that to be mindful of what's here, to evolve out of a sense of fear, you need to contact it. You have to touch it directly. It's like breathe in and feel it. She was doing that. She was feeling it, but you also have to be able to hold it in a, like you're breathing out in a larger space so it can transform and unfold. This is the way evolution works. It doesn't get rid of something. You don't get rid of the reptilian brain.

You included in the mammalian and the primate brain. They're embedded. You don't get rid of fear. You include it in a larger space of presence. So she was working with it and contacting and contacting and trying to bring care to it, but it was really strong. Well, one of our interviews, she came in with a really cheerful smile. And I said, you know, kind of what happened?

and she said, well, I went to church this morning. Well, if you know anything about these retreats, you don't leave campus. So I was kind of surprised. She goes, oh yeah, I went to church and we sang the gospel. It was rich and it was beautiful. And I was thinking to myself, okay, well, I'm pragmatic if this is what worked, you know, that she went off to church. Okay.

Because she was really glowing. So I was trying to imagine it that she was leaving and getting in a car going on a highway, you know, because it gets very quiet at these month-long retreats. But anyway, I kind of let go. And she goes on, oh, I was, this is what she said, I was feeling that same fear and feelings of failure I told you about while I was at church. And I was praying to be able to love myself.

And then as I was seeing gospel, I wrapped Jesus like a shawl around me, and the peace just filled my heart. And I haven't taken the shawl off. That love is warming me out. So it was with this inner jolt, I realized that she had gone to church in an energetic metaphoric way. She had not left campus and that she had been blessed. She had touched grace because she had connected with what's called the second wing. The first wing she was already doing, she was contacting the fear of failure.

But the second wing is holding it in a larger space of caring. So our identity shifts were no longer a victim. of the fear, we become that witnessing, compassionate presence. That was the metamorphosis. That's the caterpillar that's busy, hungry, eating, trying to prove itself, trying to be better person, coming into stillness and that shift into that freedom, that was what she experienced.

I wrote down what she said, and I'm wearing this shawl while I walk those hills and while I sit my tea and standing in line at lunch, and she gave me one of this mischievous looks because Tara, even in the shower I'm wearing that shawl. It's great. So this is the process of integration where the fear becomes a portal to love by intensifying our presence. It deepens.

Now working with the fear of failure and the fear of disconnection from others, we can work on at meditation with ourselves and we can also work on it. it and experience that kind of healing and evolutionary shift with each other. Meditation is not solo often a cave on a cushion. We meditate with each other, wake up together. And one of the stories I've always loved of that is a woman, a nun actually. Sister Helen Rosa wrote about teaching at a small Catholic school and she was teaching math students. and they were learning a new math and they were all getting discouraged and edgy and having a really hard time. And she could feel this, the fear of failure. She could feel it in the room.

She stopped the class. She had them list the names of their classmates on two sheets of paper. It was a small group. And in the space between each name, she'd have them write down the nicest thing they could say about that classmate. The next Monday, she correlated the list, the next Monday she gave each one, student their own list and she heard the whispers in the room. I didn't know others thought that about me. I never knew that meant anything to anyone. And the group was much more bonded. In fact, for the rest of the year she could feel all these like invisible bonds of connection created. Several years later she got a message from the parents of one of her students in that class.

And this was back a while ago when she wrote the story. His name was Mark and he was killed in the war. and she got a message from his parents that he was killed in Vietnam. And she had been very close with her students, and she loved him. He was very fun-loving and good-humored and very sincere. So she went to the funeral, and all of the classmates were there. And at one point, Mark's father said he wanted to show her something. So he took a wallet out of his pocket, and he said, they found this on Mark when he was killed.

and we thought you might recognize it and carefully removed these two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped and folded and refolded many times and it was the list that she had given each student with the good things written on it. At that point, and all the classmates were around, another one said, oh, I still have my list, it's in the top drawer at my desk,

and another one said, oh, Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album. And another said, it's in my diary, and another pulled one right out on the spot. So that was a moment they could cry and really just opened together to the loss. So I share this because in working with these fears, whether it's fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of loss, fear of missing out, we need to bring both the capacity to touch into the fear, but also a wider sense of what's true. We need to remember space, we need to remember presence, we need to remember love,

further to be that kind of integration and transformation. So to give an example for how that works with FOMO, with the fear of missing out, I was reflecting on myself and on those two clusters for myself, and I'm kind of borderline. I have tons of both. It's not like I mainline on one or the other. And so I was thinking through history of all the times the fear of missing out, whether it's missing out with hanging out with the kids in high school I most wanted to hang out with

or having special adventures in college out in nature or whether it was missing out as I got involved with spiritual life on the best teacher or the best practice. You know, I could see it throughout. So I'll tell you one example of when I was young and much more neurotic. this was last week No Actually this is

It started a few years ago When I was When my book True Refuge was about to come out And I had someone in our community Who was really good at marketing Say I want to get on your team And I'm going to show you a bit about marketing And so she joined with me

And Janet my assistant Who is the person who is really responsible For all these podcasts being out And anything in the cyber world And Facebook presence and everything incredible energy. So this woman and Janet got together and started to tell me things about

what would be needed, which involved me getting much more actively, producing more blog posts and seeing how the tweeting fit into the Facebooking, things that I just have not been involved with and how we needed to grab. When people get your website, you have to grab their names for your...

This is the language. grab their names for your email list, you grow your email list. Well, it's ambition, ambition. And so it was like I was feeling this pressure and getting involved and I could feel in myself this growing sense of, because everybody else was doing it. I had this fear of missing out. My presence out in the cyber world,

it relied on me just grabbing opportunities and doing more. So it was really very striking to me, this feeling of kind of edginess that started building in my system around it. And when I caught it, I didn't have the word FOMO then, but I realized that that was the feeling, that I was supposed to jump on a wave and ride it and make sure it was the biggest possible wave, you know, that kind of thing. So I stopped internally, and I started deepening attention.

And what I asked myself, what was I afraid of missing out on? What was this wave that if I missed it, I'd lose that? What is it I really was wanting to have happen out of all this? And when I asked that question, I started reconnecting, I went away from stats, you know, and I started reconnecting, oh, you know, I love these practices of waking up,

of waking up our hearts and minds, I just want them to be out there more. And when I started feeling that sincerity, I started sensing, you know, what matters to me is I want to live in that sense of loving awareness and just express it. I want my life to be an expression of it. And then I said, well, wait a minute, isn't that right here now? It's like what I'm wanting from getting more blog posts out and grabbing names and having a bigger

email is the loving awareness and living it and expressing it's right here now. If we dig deep into FOMA, we'll find what we most deep. what we're most deeply afraid of missing out on is always and already here. The ego delusion in FOMO is that it's down the road somewhere else. So I practice much as I described with this other woman of just feeling the angstiness, feeling it, but also sensing that loving presence that's right here. feeling the angst that kind of there's something more, there's something more, but feeling, oh, right here, right here. Until what I found happened for me is it really did become a portal because I felt this increasing aliveness

that what I was seeking was right here. And I would share with people and the big question that comes from FOMO people is, but wait a minute, if I think what I'm seeking is right here, then I won't be motivated to do anything. How am I going to be motivated to make the investment or seek out the other teachings or read the books? And what happens is, actually, the more that we realize that what we long for is right here, the more we're resting in awareness, the more of the natural intelligence and aliveness of the universe flows through us. And we keep on being creative and engaged. It's just not so driven by ego.

there's another kind of intelligence that guides us because I don't feel like I've gotten less engaged with things I just feel like there's less of a self that's organized around it D.H. Lawrence puts it this way when we get out of the glass bottles of our ego and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forest again we will shiver with cold and frighten

but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taught with power. We shall stamp our feet with new power, and old things will fall down. We shall laugh and institutions will curl up like burnt paper. So the point is this, that these fears can either trap us so that we're the worm addicted to eating grape leaves,

we're kind of spinning in our own cocoon, always thinking that what we want is ahead of us or that what we fears around the corner and not really being able to find the love and aliveness that's right here. And if when those clusters of fears come up, we use them to deepen our attention, it wakes us up. No matter the fear, whether it's something's missing or something's wrong,

when it's included in a larger field of presence, it taps us into the love and aliveness that's right here. And just to say that it's not a one-shot, it's not like once I caught on to the fact that this whole marketing thing was revving up my fomo and I got a wind of it, then all of a sudden I was just in a dynamic, creative place, but not ego caught up.

It's like it kept reappearing, but each time I would pause enough to say, wait a minute, what am I really longing for? And isn't it already here? The kind of ego-grassing would loosen and then I'd get to re-engage but in a much more creative, relaxed way. I've given the metaphor that I find really, really helpful that each time we pause and bring mindful presence to what's going on, it's like the process of dying, a piece of cloth into indigo, the color, the richness of indigo. And for those that aren't familiar, if you take a white cloth and you dip it into a vat of indigo dye, when you pull it out,

it's just a tiny bit, you know, first it looks like it's blue, but then it fades right to just a little bit off white. So you have to rinse it and dip it again. And then you pull it out. And you'll notice that it fades down, but a little more of the blue holes. And every time you dip it into the vat and pull it out, a little more of that vibrant rich indigo colors in it. And so it is with these practices of mindfulness, that every time you encounter the fear of failure or the fear of missing out and you're willing to pause and feel it in your body and hold it with that kindness and presence, each time you'll more and more and feel, you're willing to pause and feel it in your body,

time you'll more and more sense a truer kind of beingness rather than the confined ego self. You'll sense you're resting in something larger. So let's practice a little and then we'll just close together. I want to give you a chance just to pick one thing where you feel you get caught where you're a bit in the cocoon and cut off from all that you can be. Just get a taste of how you might work with it. So as you pause, let yourself come into the present moment. Just feel your breath and your body and pick one area where you know you get hooked. Somewhere where you get that you're fearing failure or rejection or fearing missing out where you get smaller. Vision narrows. There's tightness.

where you lose track of some of the larger truths and see if you can pick the particular situation that most represents when you get stuck, sensing what you're afraid of, and honestly letting yourself connect with the fear. And for some, it might be a mix of fear and wanting. Just feel how it is in your body as an energy, just sense what it's like.

If it helps to use the breath, you can sense as you breathe in that you're just agreeing to feel and contact where that lives. This is the wing of mindful contact, noticing and opening to what's here. You might sense as you connect with the fear and the wanting what it is that you're most wishing if you're afraid of failure, what is it, what's the space, our love, our acceptance, or forgiveness that might most hold this fear for many of us if we're afraid of falling short, there's this real yearning to feel belonging to others and to life, to really trust that, to know that we belong to this living web, we can't fall out of it.

so that you can breathe in and feel the fear, but breathe out and sense the whole web of life that you belong to, that loving awareness that you're part of. It's the fear of missing out. Just sensing what it is you're really longing for. Are you longing to feel a sense of contributing, a sense of full aliveness, a sense of full creativity? Then breathe in and feel the fear

and breathe out and sense how that's all. already here. Just breathe into what's already here. The liberating question with FOMO is, isn't what I'm longing for already here? Breathe out and sense how it's already here. Sense as you bring more presence to these fears, the shift in your own experience of who you are, the shift from the victim of fear, the one who's caught in fear, to the witness. to that wisdom and compassion that's bearing witness. This is how a human being can change. There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly he wakes up, call it grace, whatever. Something wakes him and he's no longer a worm. He's the entire vineyard and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that doesn't need. need to devour. Amstay and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.