It’s Time to Face the Groundhog of Fear

09/08/11 • 3 min

As I’ve been telling you, you and I are going to change your life. Hopefully, you’re up to speed on this, because we’ll be a lot more effective in changing your life completely if you know what’s going on.

Last time, we talked about what you deserve. But once you get the inkling about what you deserve, there’s still a number of things that can stand in the way of getting that pile of deserving. Before you start going around pointing and blaming possible things that stand in your way, the biggest road block is not one you can shake a finger at. That’s right, it’s fear.

Folks, fear is probably the most worthless of all feelings. Sure, it’s valuable when you’re being chased by a saber-tooth tiger who is hell bent on devouring you whole. But, I don’t know if you noticed, but there ain’t many saber-tooth tigers around anymore. The problem is, we have this whole whack of feelings that we evolved as a necessity for survival, but more than likely, we find most of our survival needs easily met. Since there’s no saber-tooth tigers to pin our fear on, we pin it on whether or not there’s enough milk left for our cereal, or the possibility that we’re going to have a bad haircut.

When we want to change something, fear pops up like a pesky groundhog. Instead of flushing out that groundhog immediately, we often sulk and abandon our nice manicured lawn to the fear. Worse yet, our fear can be so powerful that we begin to justify its existence. “Oh, I don’t think a manicured lawn was really for me,” you say, or “Maybe groundhogs are just a sign for me to live in a basement.” In other words, you think that you and the fear have to find common ground.

Let’s shoot that idea right in the face. It’s time to see that fear is out to destroy every ounce of ground you’ve gained, not because it is evil, but because its little walnet-size brain doesn’t know whose ground it’s messing with. If you want to coddle and nurse the fear, that’s fine. You could even help it by going out there with a shovel and digging your own holes.

I know, destroying fear is scary. You look out and see these long, giant mounds of upturned dirt, and it might seem like there’s some kind of giant snake living in the ground you want to gain back. But no, it’s just a stupid little furry thing. Kill it. Kill it until it’s dead.

Or, if you want to be nicer to a little destructive furry thing, then trap it and move it to where it can’t be so pesky. After all, you might come across a bear one day, and you’ll need to defend yourself with your little furry bundle of fear.

What’s that? A groundhog isn’t much good in an encounter with a bear? Oh, well, I guess it’s best to let it go then. After all, if you want to change your life, then carrying around a groundhog in a cage doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

Just My Thoughts,
Dr. Matt

Just My Thoughts,
Dr. Matt

Previous Episode

You Deserve More Than a Crap Sandwich

Folks, it’s time for a change.

I don’t mean for me. I’m happy as a clam who has been invited to a clam honoring ceremony, in which he or she is about to receive an award for Most Delightful Clam. I can’t think of other circumstances in which a clam would be happy, so that will have to do.

No, I’m talking about you, of course, to you folks out there who are ready for a change.

You see, I’ve decided to tell you how to change your life: dramatically, completely, and irreversibly. Sure, I’ve probably mentioned how to do this on other occasions. In fact, practically everything I’ve written should have done this already, but now I think it’s time to get you a bit more involved. After all, you may have specific ideas about how you want your life to change.

Chances are, though, that you don’t actually have the specifics. In fact, I’d bet a pile of lizard tails that you have a hard time accepting that you deserve anything different from what you already got. So, before we start talking about making a change, I think you and I have to have a sit-down about your deservability.

Folks, most people think that life has to be earned. You think you have to work hard in order to have a life of travel. You think you need to invest time in some crappy thing in order to get some other good thing. What you don’t realize is that this idea is a crap sandwich with a side of poo pie. Plus a coffee.

People give you this idea because they’ve already eaten the same crap sandwich, and they don’t think it’s fair that you shouldn’t have to endure the misery that they have. In fact, they probably were handed a crap sandwich from day one, only it would have been puréed so as to be digestible by a human baby.

Step one is seeing that the idea that you have to earn your life implies that you have to earn it from all those other sandwich-eaters out there, when they themselves haven’t earned the right to judge who’s earned what. If no one, then, is a fair judge of what you’ve earned, not your boss nor your family nor your friends, then what you deserve is limitless.

“Deserve is a strong word, Dr. Matt,” you’re probably saying. You’re thinking to yourself that it sounds rational that you don’t have to earn anything from anyone else, but to deserve it is a whole other crazy idea.

Well, get crazy, folks. Deserving means that you’ve reached a threshold of contribution which should reward you with something. If you take away the idea that you have to give and give to the people around you, that your contributions are inherently required, in order to have anything for yourself, then all you’re left with is the deserving.

I probably just blew your mind. Am I suggesting that getting what you want doesn’t take work? Heck, no. You can’t end up with 50 gallons of milk without milking a few cows. All I’m saying is that it’s not up to your friends and family whether or not you deserved the milk. And certainly not the cow. If it’s not up to anyone else, well, then I guess it comes down to you, pardner.

So, if you want to make a change, then first you have to come to the fact that your life belongs to you. I mean, after all, unless you’re some kind of zombie, vampire, or alien, you’re the one living it. Incidentally, if you are some kind of zombie, vampire, or alien, I’m on to you.

In my next post, you and I are going to start going about making some changes. That is, you are going to make some changes, and I’m going to tell you how. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything in order for me to help you out. You already deserve me. Isn’t that fantastic?

Of course, if you want to work with me one-on-one, that’ll be $300/hour. I’m not running a charity here.

-Dr. Matt

Next Episode

In Defense of Brad Pitt

Not long ago, The Hollywood Reporter, which is some kind of online smut magazine, published a story with this headline: “Brad Pitt Uses ‘Moneyball’ Promotional Tour to Criticize Jennifer Aniston“.

About his former marriage to Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt had said this: “I started to get sick of myself sitting on a couch, holding a joint, hiding out. It started feeling pathetic. It became very clear to me that I was intent on trying to find a movie about an interesting life, but I wasn’t living an interesting life myself. I think that my marriage had something to do with it. Trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t.”

Now, you might be thinking that Brad Pitt might benefit from my book, When It Comes To Relationships, You’ve Been An Idiot, so that he would know how to treat someone who’s been a former relationship partner. While that may be true, the person with the relationship problem isn’t Brad Pitt. The problem is the rest of you.

I don’t know if you noticed, but nowhere in that statement did Mr. Pitt criticize Ms. Aniston. He criticized himself and his approach to his marriage. But that didn’t stop the author of this article, a Kimberly Nordyke, from implying that he had betrayed his former wife. And it didn’t stop the rest of the Internet from jumping on the bandwagon. In the comments on the article, some of you called Brad Pitt a jerk and a loser, and insulted his current partner Angelina Jolie as being an overbearing, mentally-unstable seductress who collects babies for fun and/or profit.

Guess what, people. When you get mad about the relationship outcome for people that you don’t personally know, then it doesn’t have anything to do with their relationships. If you hate Angelina for what she did to poor Jen, then it doesn’t mean that Angie is a bad person; it means that you’re too chicken to face how you feel about your own relationship experiences. Instead of dealing with how you feel, you’d rather find a stranger with a pretty face and kick the crap out of them instead. If you think that Brad Pitt speaking honestly about his marriage is too much to handle, again, for the inexplicably delicate Jennifer Aniston, then you’d rather undermine the strength of women then give up your pitiful excuse-making out of your own victimhood.

Internet (and that includes you, Kimberly Nordyke), if you think I’m being hard on you, I guess I just don’t have much patience for your sexist, destructive mouth diarrhea that seeks to destroy a current relationship for no good reason other than your own cowardice. When I said that when it comes to relationships, you’d been an idiot, clearly I wasn’t using strong enough language. Because, when it comes to the relationship between yourself and the family of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, you’ve been an shining example of top-notch douchebaggery.

Now, I wouldn’t say that all of the actions of these famous people have been courteous 100% of the time, but as for Brad Pitt, it hasn’t come without healthy self-examination, which is what his quote speaks to. In fact, he followed up with a public statement in support of his former wife, due to the blatant and intentional misinterpretation by the masses. When was the last time that any of you sent a press release praising the virtues of your ex? My guess is never.

If you don’t like what I’m saying, it’s because this is actual criticism. Hopefully, this way you’ll know what criticism looks like and, in the future, you won’t falsely accuse Brad Pitt of it. (Kimberly Nordyke.)

But I can understand why you might be upset, and why you might have been upset at Brad Pitt in the first place. I think you’re faced with a dilemma. If Angelina and Brad and Jennifer aren’t actually playing out the roles you’ve handed to them, then you’re left with a handful of roles. It’s just you and those roles that you hold. You’re left with the role of a betrayer, a seductress, a jerk, a loser, a victim, and a crazy person who collects babies.

What you don’t understand is that you have a choice. Sure, you could continue to try to hurl your craptasms at someone else. See if it takes long enough for them to bounce back to you that you feel some reprieve. Or you could let go of them. Someone might call that “forgiveness”, but I call it: “Stop being a dumbass.”

Folks, it’s time to take responsibility for what roles you want to hold, and time to take responsibility for yourself. Because someday, you might be on the receiving end, where someone throws a role at you, and you can sa...