Do You Distract and Survive or Dive in and Thrive?

by Ryan Biddulph

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Fear awaits you.

Do you resist fear to distract and survive?

Or do you dive in to fear and thrive?

Working a job to cover survival needs, driving home to enjoy dinner, TV and a beer then going to sleep is distracting and surviving. Work a job mainly if not solely to survive. Make enough money to eat, procure shelter, pay bills and put away some savings. Spend the remainder of the day distracting self with TV, alcohol and maybe light gossip. Make no mistake about it; surviving and distracting is unhappiness manifest as a love of comfort but obsession with dodging fear.

The ego bandies about various excuses concerning surviving and distracting. You need money. You need to unwind after a busy, stressful day at work. You just want to relax. Each excuse makes perfect sense to the ego but appealing to the insane aspect of yourself is equally insane. No one enjoys living in fear. No one who gives most of their human existence to surviving and distracting self from truth enjoys the gig.

Divers and thrivers:

face
feel
release

deep fears in mind by doing a deep fear dive. From there, this select crowd thrives by living a fun, freeing and sometimes uncomfortable life.

People often observe Kelli and I to be an alien species. I find this odd. All we did was face our fears. What seems so alien about that?!

My wife and I did survive and distract for a good three decades. Life was working jobs and spending most spare time distracting ourselves with mindless activities binding, confining and imprisoning in nature. But we faced our deep fears to do the deep fear dive. We began thriving after nudging into fear again and again.

Circling the globe for 10 years feels like thriving and diving to us. But other people live a different version of diving and thriving. Listen to your intuition. Dive deep into fear. Shed survival mode. Release distraction mode. Observe how quickly you follow your dreams. Pay close attention to how evenings shift from beer and TV to working out, meditating and building your blogging business side hustle.

Change feels uncomfortable. Prepare yourself to face fears as you thrive. The ego whines and screams for the beer and mindless TV to wind down but the ego is surviving and distracting. At the end of your life, do you want to pat yourself on the back for successfully surviving until death and for distracting yourself from the truth, fun and freedom for the majority of your human existence? Does each sound like a worthy endeavor?

Thrive!

Dive into your fears. Develop the skill of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Follow your dreams. Migrate toward your version of freedom. Facing fear may goad you to seek a freeing promotion. Or perhaps you quit your job, start a blogging business and live off of your healthy savings for 6-12 months. Maybe you decide to put government support behind to get a job, for your dignity, sense of purpose and overall wellness, choosing to be truly helpful versus surviving and distracting.

Every thriving story looks somewhat different but every thriv-er deep dives into their fears.

What are you waiting for?

Face fear.

Decide to thrive.

Put distracting and surviving in your rear view window.