Fear
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear recently. Why are so many of us stopped by fear?
So many people are living lives of quiet desperation, putting up with so much less than they deserve or want, unable to follow where their heart’s desire wants to lead them, ignoring the quiet urgings of their soul’s longing to move towards the life of their dreams. They may envy those brave souls who ‘go for it’, but they can’t do it themselves.
But this fear ain’t real. It’s not the ‘pursued by a sabre tooth tiger’ sort of fear. It’s just a chimera - the ‘what if …’ (’what will people think?’, ‘what if I cock up?’, ‘what if I end up looking ridiculous?’) fear that saps energy and creativity.
And it’s all just a trick of the ego, a mechanism for keeping us stuck in the past and repeating the same monotonous, self-defeating patterns over and over again. It’s our shadow side - what Debbie Ford calls ‘the voice of our wounds, of our heartache and of our deep resignation and hopelessness that it won’t work for us or that we can’t do it.’
The trouble is that if that voice wins, we go to our grave never having lived our full potential or shared our gift with the world. Doesn’t everyone deserve that? Isn’t that our birthright?
Each one of us contains the seeds of something great - a unique perspective, a bunch of special gifts. And confronting our shadow is the fastest and easiest way to reclaim our power and step into the person our soul longs to be.
So if you’re contemplating working with a coach, or going to some transformational seminar, or embarking on any sort of personal development program … and you feel scared … then consider taking it as a sign that you’re heading in the right direction, moving toward your evolutionary edge. Don’t let your fear win. Love it. Hug it. Understand that it’s just a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 10-year-old stuck inside of you.
And trust the part of you that wants to grow - because you’ll never be truly happy and fulfilled until you do.
Where DID all those negative recurring thoughts and beliefs and habits come from? You might be surprised if you really take the time to look!
Ask yourself this question: are you more scared of staying the same or of doing the work you need to do to reinvent yourself as the person you TRULY are?