Fearing Yourself Most
I talk a lot about become strong at all costs and conquering your fears. But there is a cost you shouldn't be willing to pay, and there is a healthy fear that you should never fully lose: The fear of yourself and what you could become.
Looking In The Mirror
In the pursuit of strength and greatness, you need to be looking in the mirror every day. Not to admire yourself, but to evaluate yourself. While we must always be willing to give, to sacrifice, to go to the extremes to become our best selves, there has be a limit.
We have to be willing to maintain a healthy fear of ourselves, of what we can become if we completely abandon all sense of who we are and the values we hold. The point isn't to hold to one set of values or another, it is to know what YOUR values are, and who YOU are. To be sure that every time you look in the mirror, you are a better version of that person.
It is essential, then, to be vigilant and self critical at all times. To always be asking yourself if what you have done and plan to do is in alignment with your values. Reaching your goals is meaningless if you become a person that you hate along the way.
Coming Back When You Lose Your Way
If you don't maintain this healthy fear of the monster within, it becomes all to easy to miss yourself becoming it. Small choices add up. Little slips get excused as just this one time, they deserved it, it was worth it.
Before you know it, you don't recognize the person in the mirror the next time you look. But even if this does happen, it's never too late to dig in your heels and stop the slide.
Remind yourself of why you started doing this to begin with, of why you wanted to become stronger, to be the vest version of yourself. It wasn't to become an amoral person with no values. It wasn't to reach mountain top and look to realize you've lost everything and everyone that you hold dear.
Stop and retrace your steps. Just as the fall from grace can start with small choices, the way back can as well. Devote yourself to an awareness of even your smallest choices and motivations. Root out the selfish and harmful in yourself, even if it is only in your own thoughts.
The alternative is to slip deeper and deeper into methods that take from and prey upon others, and ultimately ruin you. Fear that. Fear yourself most of all. Fear what you can become.
What Do You Fear?
As always, I want to hear from all of you. Tell us what parts of yourself you fear most. Tell us how you stay vigilant, how you keep yourself looking in the mirror.