and three signs fear is holding you back
We are wired for fear.
It signals us in times of danger and prepares us to survive.
When I talk about Love More Fear Less – I don’t mean being fearless.
I mean reducing all the unnecessary fears that hold us back while allowing a clean connection to the fears that keep us safe.
As Helen Keller said, avoiding danger is no safer in the long run then out right exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
These days, too many of us are caught up in the fear that has become big business.
We live in a climate fuelled by fear.
Politicians froth fears for votes.
The media manipulates fear for attention.
Parents wield fear in an attempt to control behaviour.
Religious leaders stir up fear to keep their flock in line.
The message we get everywhere we look is: you are not safe.
While our ancestors may have had more legitimate fears to survive, the way fear is woven into the fabric of our lives today means we face fear on a daily basis.
These days, it’s hard to not allow fear to influence our choices.
But, decisions that are motivated by fear are flawed.
They are dangerous and can derail us from the life we love.
Here are three signs fear is stopping you from living a life you love.
- You’re attuned to the negative. In a world that is constantly telling you all the reasons to be afraid, a person who is controlled by fear will see the downside with every decision they face. They are focused on everything that could go wrong, rather than everything that might go right.
- You feel constriction instead of expansion. Fear keeps us feeling stuck and small in an effort to keep us safe. “Don’t put yourself out there, avoid failure and rejection at all costs”, says fear. So, we don’t ask for the promotion, or publish the book, or speak our truth.
- You don’t know how to tell the difference between the voice of your intuition and the voice of fear. Your instincts and intuition are trustworthy, your body knows things your mind doesn’t. But, the cacophony of noisy opinions and spiralling thoughts that fear spouts can drown out the loving voice of your inner knowing.
Fear limits us, makes us sick, causes us to sabotage ourselves, creates more fear, causes indecision, pushes us to avoid, tempts us to distractions, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here are three of my favourite practices for overcoming fear.
- Create a thought firewall. Train your mind to think more positive thoughts and less of the negative thoughts. This will eventually help you to create a “thought firewall”, which will essentially block out unhelpful, fearful thoughts.
- Untangle the fears. Identify the ‘clean fear’ (legit fears that keep you safe) and the ‘messy fear’ (fear-based conditioning or stories that are not grounded in reality). What good comes from the clean fear? What bad comes from the messy fear?
- See fear as an invitation. See fear as a call to action, as an invitation to make a change, to learn a skill, to focus on what you can control, to create a plan.
One of the beautiful things of being human is that we are flexible, ever-evolving beings.
Even though we may have lived the majority of our life until now ruled by fear, today can be the day we do something different.
Making one tiny decision and taking one baby step is how we begin the shift to living a life we utterly adore.
SOMETHINGS
SOMETHING to support you
If you’d like even more support with Overcoming Fear, please consider joining us for Love More Fear Less.
We’d love to have you on this nine-month journey of soulful and scientific support as we reconfigure fear into love.
SOMETHING to take you a little deeper.
These three signs and three practices are from a larger resource I created (it’s too big to put into the Sunday Love Letter).
If you’d like to read all twelve signs that fear is stopping you from living a life you love and all eleven practices for overcoming it, you can pick it up right over here.
SOMETHING simple
Breathing deeply and doing absolutely nothing (even if for just a few minutes), was one of the best things I did for myself this week. Perhaps, it might support you too?