Facing your fears. 5 truths about fear.

Facing your fears. Imagine yourself in any one of these scenarios.

You’ve been offered your dream job, in another city.

You’re back in the dating world and have been seeing an amazing person for 4 months, they’ve asked you to move in.

You’ve been asked to give a presentation at work, to 50 people, and you’ve never spoken in public before.

In each one of these scenarios there’s probably one thing that keeps coming up in your mind, I can’t. The idea of this scares the heck out of me. Nope, sorry I don’t think I can.

Fear. It’s one of our biggest obstacles in life.

I’m sure you will have no problem coming up with several excuses for each one of the above scenarios, but the bottom line is, you’re to scared.

The power that fear has over our lives  is amazing and more often than not if you take it on in a fight, it ends up winning.

Fear is a powerful foe.

Because of this fear is a topic that comes up often in coaching sessions because it can paralyze us, stop us from trying something new or even make us sick.

“What has stopped you from doing this?”

“I guess I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know.”

The answer to this question is often so automatic that we don’t even dig into the reason for it. And there we stop. Never being able to move past it, to take a chance, to give it a try. It’s just way to uncomfortable.

Recently a client said that he was afraid of trying something. I reminded him of the book  FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY, by Ph.D Susan Jeffers that I had asked him to read and said, “What did you learn from that book was at the bottom of every fear most of us have?

The answer?    THAT I CAN’T HANDLE IT.

Think about it, in reality “at the bottom of every one of your fears is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you.”

This conversation with my client made me realize that it was  also time for me to go back to Susan’s book and remind myself of the Five Truths of Fear, because I myself had been playing it to small in my life lately.

Five truths about fear

1. The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow.
2. The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and actually to it.
3. The only way to feel better about yourself is to go out…. and do it.
4. No only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, SO IS EVERYONE ELSE!!!
5. Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

FACING MY FEARS

I can think of 3 major examples in my life where all of these 5 things were absolutely true.

1. Selling my home and emigrating to Panama.
2. Joining Toastmasters and becoming a public speaker.
3. Committing to a new relationship 4 years after my 24 year marriage ended and moving in with him.

I realized that fear was always going to be there of me, as long as I had dreams or hopes, fear was always going to show up and I wasn’t prepared to stop learning and growing in my life. The only way I was I going to have each experience and learn and enjoy them was by actually doing it!!! I did feel better after I did all of them and knowing that others were just as scared as I was to do what I was doing when I spoke to them about their experiences helped a lot. And finally number 5 was so true, I didn’t want to live with any regret in my life for not pushing through that fear and lamenting about what might have been if only I had done it.  My life wasn’t about regrets and I wasn’t going to start doing that now.

FACING YOUR FEARS

Where in your life are you letting fear win out?

What dream or hope do you have that you have given up on because you let fear make the decision?

Where in your life do you feel helpless because fear always takes the drivers seat?

Try posting these 5 Fear Truths where you can be reminded of them. And if you need even more support to get out there and do it, consider spending a bit of time with a coach to help you feel supported while you push through the fear.

Having two of you to battle that fear monster could make all the difference in your life

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