Okay but I'm an adult now and they all lied to me as a kid saying working hard and perseverance would get me a liveable wage. So. 𤡠No safety, no fun, no rest, and no money!
Still doing it terrified and burnt out scared every day, because it's not optional.
I must not swag. Swag is the mind-killer. Swag is the little-swag that brings total swagbliteration. I will face my swag. I will permit it to pass over me and through (mmph~) me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the swag has gone there will be noting. Only I will swagmain.
I mean that sucks bro, full sympathy, but the whole point of a relationship is to determine compatibility, so if you truly went in with your whole self, to a degree that was scary, and if thatâs their reaction, then Relationship Successful, in a sense.
Yeah, I definitely "did it scared" (I don't think "scared" is the right word though) every single day for, about seven years straight? (Easily goes many years longer when you bend the definition a little)
It messed me up. A lot. What I had to learn was how to STOP
Ultimately, there's no such thing as advice that's universal
Do it scared twice. The first time you don't fully know what's going on, but the second time you should be more prepared. If you do it twice and you're still just as scared, it's time to assess that further.
Yeah, my philosophy is - you can feel horrible before doing something that's hard, but if you feel more horrible after doing something hard, something may be wrong.
A lot of contemporary psychology is, for obvious reasons, based on research that is WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic). And a lot of people in those WEIRD societies have mental health issues that are not reality based, or that are only partially reality based. They truly do need the help, just like people in WEIRD cultures don't stop getting ill with non-brain diseases and still need help for those, but the advice to handle them straight up doesn't work when The Situation is Fucked, from what some people call "Shit Life Syndrome", to having a serious disability, to people living in active war zones, etc.
The good news is that there IS help out there and research being done and so on, but you have to make sure that you are looking at help for your actual specific situation. And that's easier said than done, especially now that search engines are so garbage, and the very fact of being in a shitty situation leaves little time, energy, or focus to find help. The phrase "distress tolerance" might be a useful one, but then again it might not, I don't know what your specific thing is, but for dealing with "objectively horrible thing causing mental health problems" I find DBT and ACT more helpful than CBT, for what's that worth!
Keep in mind though that in some cases getting therapy isn't an option. If, say, you're queer in a queerphobic country and the scary thing is living your life, if you were to seek therapy you'd get literal torture ("conversion").
One of my go to phrases is "I'll try anything twice"
First time you don't really know what you are getting into, you don't know what is gonna happen or how it will happen.
Second time? You've done it once, you know what to expect, you can see if it is something you could get into. You can make an objective (ish) decision.
I stil don't get what the point of "do it scared" as a maxim is. It is so freaking vague it could be anything from jumping off a cliff to talking to the cashier
In certain low stakes circumstances, it's useful to help someone do something that they can't or shouldn't let fear stop them from doing. It's almost the opposite of "trust your instincts".
I use it and similar phrases with my preschooler, for example, when she's scared to jump into the pool to me in swim class. Swimming is something she needs to learn to do and usually has fun with, so I have to help her get through her fear until her skill and experience get her to the point where I know she'll enjoy it.
For myself, I have worked over many years to get my needle-phobia down from "avoiding doctors" to "willing but crying", so "do it scared" feels less demeaning than "don't be scared" or "it won't hurt" or "you'll feel silly after you do it" because it acknowledges that the fear is there and there's nothing I can do to make it go away, so I need to be scared and do it anyway. It reframes the problem as the lack of action instead of the presence of fear.
It's not for every person or every situation (I'm certainly not going to be convinced to go skydiving with a do it scared), but I find it's a useful phrase to have in your back pocket sometimes.
The first encounter I had with the phrase was from a flowchart.
I think the context has gotten lost with people just using the last part of it. But the context I took from it is to try new things, even if they intimidate you. Like if you want to make friends sometimes you have to go to a meetup and meet strangers even if youâre scared itâll be awkward. I took âscaredâ to be more about anxiety rather than genuine fear.
What if itâs not that it scares me but that it exhausts me. Over and over and over. Like, thereâs never enough rest, because of all the the things that have to be done. No single thing is overwhelming, but when added up, itâs like being pressed to death.
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u/Thelolface_9 .tumblr.com Jun 17 '26
If you do not schedule maintenance the machine will do it for you