Matt's Audio Letter of the Week

Hey everyone,

Welcome to this edition of the Feel Better Letter—the FBL.
This is Matt. Hope you’re having a great week.

The message for today is simple:

Fear is not a justifiable excuse to limit your life.

I want to pause on that for a moment.

If you look at anyone other than yourself and ask whether fear is a valid reason not to pursue something they genuinely want—going to college because they fear failing, entering a relationship because they fear heartbreak—you’ll have a hard time finding a scenario where fear truly makes sense as the deciding factor.

When we look at others, it’s obvious: it doesn’t make sense to live through a dominant fear lens.
Fear is destructive in nature. And the illusion people living in fear often have is that fear is keeping them safe. In reality, it’s quietly destroying their potential and creating a life that is small and limited. That is what fear does by its very nature.

Fear isn’t just an emotion—it’s a lens.
Like wearing tinted glasses. If the glasses are red, everything looks red—not because it is red, but because you’re seeing it through that filter.

The fear lens works the same way. When you’re in fear, everything becomes distorted through it.

And here’s the tricky part: even the path out of fear gets distorted by fear.

I was talking with someone this week who had a big aha moment around this.
Fear will never help you get out of fear. But most people evaluate the recovery process through the fear lens—whether they’re considering getting help, making a change, or taking a step forward.

Fear always subtly directs you away from getting better if you listen to it.
It will say, “This month isn’t a good time—maybe next month.” Then next month comes, and suddenly that isn’t a good time either. Or it says, “You need to be 100% certain before you take the step”—a level of certainty you will almost never have.

Fear convinces you it’s keeping you safe by avoiding the unknown, but in doing so, it creates a prison.
Fear can only perpetuate itself. It can only create more fear. Whether it’s recovery, relationships, finances—fear projects itself onto everything you look at.

That’s why being stuck in fear is so insidious: it can’t lead you anywhere except deeper into itself. Even when you think you’re trying to get better, the lens you’re using is still fear.

What usually shifts things is not willpower—it’s exhaustion.
People eventually get so tired of living in limitation that they finally surrender the fear-based strategies their mind keeps offering. They become willing to try something different. That openness is what allows new possibilities to emerge.

And if you reflect on times you’ve made decisions from fear, you’ll likely notice: even when you were convinced it was the “smart” or “safe” choice, it usually led to regret. Trying something and having it not work out still gives you something. But avoiding something out of fear only strengthens fear’s grip.

So when you look at your life as a whole, fear simply isn’t a justified reason to let your life shrink.
It doesn’t mean the world is without danger or that things will always go your way. It means that living from fear itself only leads to destruction.

It’s easy to see this in others. The real work is seeing it in ourselves:
Where does fear have a foothold?
Where does it secretly run the show?
Where does it shape your actions without you fully noticing?

You owe it to yourself to start removing those footholds.

That’s my thought for today.
Hope this was helpful. I hope to serve you. And if you know someone who might benefit from this message, please share it with them.

Hope you have a great day.