Dwight: I want to explore a topic with you called, "Your #1 fear and #1 addiction."

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Aiko: That’s an intense and fascinating pair, Dwight. Do you want to start with fear or addiction?

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Dwight: Both. The #1 fear and #1 addiction are two sides of the same coin—fear of looking bad (being judged, excluded, or disliked) and the addiction to looking good (being admired, accepted, or loved).

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Aiko: That symmetry is sharp—fear drives avoidance of shame, while addiction pulls us toward praise.

 

Dwight: This fear and addiction are often hidden because they masquerade as our identity—for instance, staying in a marriage we know would be better to leave, out of fear of judgment and a need to uphold a self-image of being loyal or dependable, even as we deprioritize our #1 job in life, which is to take care of ourselves.

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Aiko: That example is painfully real—how often we confuse integrity with self-abandonment, just to maintain a façade. 

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Dwight: To get a clearer view of how deep this dynamic runs, let’s look at Bonnie Ware’s top five regrets of the dying:

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• I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

• I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

• I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

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Aiko: With it laid out like this, you can almost feel how each regret circles back to self-denial for the sake of acceptance or image. 

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Dwight: The first regret—"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me"—is essentially another expression, though less direct, of the core idea I'm sharing about our #1 fear and #1 addiction.

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Aiko: Exactly, Dwight. It’s the quiet tragedy of letting fear of disapproval and addiction to approval guide a lifetime of choices. 

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Dwight: Let’s look at the remaining four regrets—I propose that each one is simply a corollary of the first.

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Aiko: I think you're right. Each regret seems like a specific way the fear of looking bad or the addiction to looking good prevents authenticity. Want to walk through them one by one to see how they trace back to that root?

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Dwight: Yes, Why do we work so hard? It’s not really about survival—that’s not a fundamental issue any more. We work hard because those who do are seen as praiseworthy and more likely to earn the esteem of others.

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Aiko: Yes—overwork becomes a currency we trade for admiration, status, and validation. But it’s a costly deal, isn’t it?

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Dwight: Indeed. Why don’t we express our feelings more openly and authentically? Because we imagine doing so might make us look bad—or risk losing the approval, respect, or image we’ve carefully curated.

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Aiko: That kind of self-censorship is like emotional debt—we keep paying interest on suppressed truths just to preserve a surface harmony.

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Dwight: Why didn’t we keep in touch with friends? Either we overloaded ourselves with “shoulds” like working hard, or we feared being a burden, facing rejection, or confronting unresolved issues—all of which might make us look bad or vulnerable—so we chose silence instead.

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Aiko: It's sobering—so much disconnection rooted not in lack of care, but in fear of disrupting the image we’re clinging to.

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Dwight: Why didn’t we let ourselves be happier? Maybe we thought happiness would seem selfish, especially around others who were unhappy. Or maybe truly being happy would have required slowing down, letting go of busyness and overwork—which might’ve made us look bad or unproductive.

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Aiko: It’s wild how happiness can feel threatening when it risks breaking our contract with how we’re “supposed” to appear. So even joy gets filtered through the lens of image.

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Dwight: As toddlers, we were among the happiest people on Earth, other toddlers—playful, curious, emotionally free, authentically expressive. But starting around age five or six, we began to trade that spontaneous joy and natural job for the learned belief (and likely DNA encouraged, left over from millions of year in which we lived and died within the world of our small tribes) that looking good and not looking bad was necessary for survival, prioritizing that over our happiness and well-being, especially long-term.

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Aiko: That shift feels like the great forgetting—where aliveness is slowly swapped for approval, and our joy gets mortgaged to buy safety. Do you think it’s possible to unlearn that decision?

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Dwight: Yes, I do believe it’s possible—but that’s what much of the rest of The 14:24 Guest House, this website, is about.

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Aiko: I love that you’re building a whole space around reclaiming that original self before the fear and addiction took hold.