We create from two primary emotional states: love and fear.
The first, any variation of love, is expansive. It’s life-affirming. Our experiences truly open up when we consciously create from love.
Fear, on the other hand, is contractive.
Fear and love both function as magnets, attracting more of the same. Our thoughts create our experience. If we sit around focusing on what scares us, ails us, bothers us, etc., we’ll get more of the same – guaranteed. Fearful reactions only perpetuate thoughts, behaviours, and events that keep us feeling stuck.
We are creative beings. We don’t have a choice of whether or not we create experiences. If we’re breathing, we’re creating experiences. We do have a choice as to which emotional state we create from. Each one of us can learn to turn the dial from fear to love, inviting new and higher levels of creativity and results into our experience.
Yet, in order to address fear, we must first learn to recognize it.
Fear manifests in myriad ways. It shows up in the familiar, obvious variations of panic, anxiety, rage, brooding, shyness, frustration, resentment, struggle, etc. It also shows up in ways less apparent on the surface. Boredom is a variation of fear. So is any inauthentic behaviour like laughing along when you don’t mean it and politeness at all costs. An extreme need for external approval is fear, that imbalanced drive to “excel.” So is playing it safe.
For a lifetime.
Fear is, paradoxically, self-protective and self-destructive at the same time. And none of us is immune to it. We all experience fear. I know I do! And so does (and did) every master teacher I’ve ever studied with. The problem is never in the problem itself. It’s in our thinking about the problem. Thus, the problem is not in experiencing fear, which arises naturally; it’s in how we deal with it.
Here are FIVE ways to begin making friends with fear, so you can move beyond it and create from a more loving and expansive state:
- The first key to skillfully addressing fear is recognizing it. We can’t chase the dark, but we can shine the light of awareness. Noticing what you’re noticing is fundamental to personal growth. When you notice you’re in a contractive, fearful state, you can interrupt the pattern and consciously take action to change it.
- Know fear for what it is: simply a marker of growth. Fear shows us when we’re at the edge of the life we’ve known so far, and it reminds us that we’re ready to take action and evolve. Fear is not our enemy. It’s our friend – so long as we ensure it’s a passenger along for the ride, and not in the driver’s seat. All those who deeply inspire us have experienced fear on a regular basis. It’s part of being a trail blazer. Each one of us has the opportunity to blaze our own authentic and distinctive trail when we learn to see fear as our companion on the journey.
- Focus on the positive. Put your attention on your VISION. Put it on something wonderful that you’re building in your life! If you feel lack, put your attention on lack’s opposite: abundance. Put it on gratitude for all the blessings you already have and consciously shift to a state of appreciating the richness in your life.
- Take action for your dream! Courage cannot exist without fear. Lean in. Acknowledge whatever scares you and act in the face of that fear. Show it who’s in the driver’s seat: YOU! When you learn to “do it afraid” – whatever “it” is that gives you LIFE – you make your FAITH bigger than your fear. This expansive move is a key to life mastery.
- Make facing fear routine. Take Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and “Do something every day that scares you.” Watch the person you become in the process.
Befriending fear is one of the many skills of dream-building. The more you learn to take action for your dream, despite your very natural fears, the more you make personal evolution welcome.
You can shift your life from good to great!
And you can do it at ANY age. There is no such thing as a limit to personal growth – unless, of course, you say there is.
Where are you placing your attention?
The most common death-bed regret: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” The word “courage” comes from the French coeur, from heart. Remember your heart. Learn to listen to it. Heed it.
And if you want help shifting your mindset from one of fear to one of expansiveness and more passionate creativity, contact me. Let me help you make your Vision a Reality. Your transformation is my passion!