AXA PPP healthcare are launching a new campaign called Own Your Fears, looking at the way we can use our fears in a positive way to motivate us to change the way we live for the better. While fear is a natural instinct, we needn’t ‘fear’ fear or let it hold us back. If only there was a way to positively harness these fears and use them as a springboard into something better…
I can vividly reminding lying in my bed at the parents when I was ten or eleven, the realisation that my parents were mortal and one day would die striking me with such force it was almost akin to a physical blow. I’d been on the Junior Four (year six in new money) activity week at Butlins on Barry Island, back in the day when there was a Butlins on Barry Island*, it was the first time I’d been away from home and I missed my mum. When I came home they seemed older than I remembered, and it had me worried.
The only good thing to come out of the Phantom Menace was Yoda’s comments on fear:
Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering
It can control you if you decide to let it.
Lets not.
I might not be ten or eleven now, in fact I’m actually 43 but in a funny way things have come full circle in terms of fear of a loved one dying. I’ve now three children and a lovely wife (or is that three lovely children and a wife? Probably both, just to be on the safe side) and my thoughts have turned more frequently to what would happen to my little family if I suddenly die. Part of this has been precipitated by both our sets of parents getting older, and in the case of my parents, battling illness, part of it by the realisation that my epiphany of mortality that struck me as a child happened at exactly the same age that my eldest is now.
I had a minor health scare myself last year that saw me get a ECG to ensure that the hyper-mobility I’d be diagnosed with hadn’t affected my heart. It hadn’t but there’s nothing like a heart scare to act as a wake up call is there? Every 40 something that works in an office environment, has three children and a wife is probably carrying a few extra pounds- offices are sedentary places, kids drive you to comfort eat and wives cook lovely lovely food- and things like that, along with the advancing years don’t help allay the fear.
I’m lucky in a sense that my family wouldn’t be financially ruined if I passed away tonight. There is enough in life assurance and death in service payouts to ensure that the mortgage would be paid off and my family would have about 5 years worth of my wife’s salary left over. The thing that causes me genuine gut wrenching fear is the idea that my family would be bereaved and have to live without me. That sounds a bit big headed but I found it difficult dealing with the death of my grandparents a few years ago and we weren’t even that close. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a parent in your formative years. It certainly never seems to go well in those gritty Channel 4 dramas when that sort of thing happens.
Our littlest wouldn’t have me there to cling to my leg and whimper “I want Dadda” whenever I take him to a party round a friends house that he’s been to hundreds of times. My daughter wouldn’t have me there is give her a cuddle and tell her she’s brilliant when girl playground politics get too much for her. My eldest wouldn’t have someone to nod in (feigned) understanding when he talks incessantly about Warhammer. And my wife would be stuck if the router needed rebooting. Parenting is hard, I find it incredibly difficult at times, and I know I’d struggle without my awesome wife there, so I sort of figure that more or less the reverse is probably true (it might not be, she does make it look easy at times).
I have a choice, I can comfort eat my way through this fear, putting it to the back of my mind and having another bacon and egg muffin, or a I can face it, use it to motivate and empower myself and make a difference. People, it’s time to make a difference.
It’s too easy to make New Year Resolutions and then watch fatalistically as they slide when real life gets in the way. Besides, my kids aren’t going to feel safer if I tell them I’ve been out running a bit and my lower back aches as a result. No, to do this properly I’m going to have to enlist my family to help, give them joint ownership of Project Me, and trust that they can help me see this through. After all, we’re all in this together aren’t we?
I’m aiming to get fit and involve my family in getting me fit. I might exceed the weight limit for the mini trampoline we’ve got by a third (75KG maximum!) but that doesn’t stop me putting Eye of the Tiger on and doing my own training montage of press ups, sit ups and running on the spot, with one or more children either joining in or shouting encouragement (or insults). Nobody is immortal but being fit can help me live longer with a better quality of life.
I’m lucky of course that it’s fairly easy once you get over the initial hurdle of embracing it, to tackle a rational fear like your own mortality. Irrational fears are harder to tackle but AXA PPP healthcare can help you there too, as articles like this one on resilience show.
As I begin my journey, inspired by AXA PPP healthcare, they’re going to provide resources, like their Own Your Fears microsite, and support to me, to top up what my family can do. Together we can ensure that my kids won’t have to face the same worries about their parents dying that I faced, and I can harness the positive aspects of the fear of leaving them all to fend for themselves in the big mean world…
*it actually closed after Christmas that very year. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.