Face Your Emotions

​"The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free." Oprah Winfrey

When I was a kid, I loved the film Jaws. When I say loved it, I mean I loved hiding behind the sofa and screaming.

It’s brilliance was in the expectation - the sinister fin gliding silently through the water. It’s what I couldn’t see that scared me the most.

Years later I read that Steven Spielberg couldn’t afford a very realistic shark, so focused instead on the fin and the suspense it created. When you finally see the shark at the end as it chomps the boat in two, it’s the unscariest, most plastic rubbish you have ever seen.

I take the same view of scary emotions. We avoid them because we fear them. WE don’t want to feel sad, or angry, or alone. We drink, overeat, watch too much tv, do too much internet shopping. Anything to avoid looking emotions in the face. The fins go on circling us.

But here’s the thing. Emotions are like that plastic shark. When you look them in the face, you can see that they aren’t really going to bite your legs off. Sure they might look a little bit scary, but it was your own fear of them that gave them the power.

If you want to really live life, make changes, be who you want to be, look those emotions in the face. They’re not as scary as you think.