Fear is everywhere. It is easy to give in to fear. It’s much harder to take a stand and decide against fear.
Fear is running most of our life, if we are not careful.
Our subconscious is programmed with survival mode, meaning it wants you to steer away from anything that is not familiar. To step out of your comfort zone means stepping out of familiar territory. Your instincts are trying to keep you safe (there may be an unknown predator or poisonous berries around the corner). It is important to realize this; otherwise it is like fighting an invisible opponent. Quite exhausting and not much of a chance you will succeed.
There are 3 key elements that contribute to fear:
- Lack of information
- Lack of faith
- Lack of love
Lack of information simply means you are in a new situation and your body can’t know that it’s safe so it’s sending you alarm signals to encourage you to get out of there! The more information you can gather about the situation you are in, the more you can put the alarm bells to rest. So look at the situation at hand and see what you can learn that stills the worried voice inside. Has anyone else done anything similar? Can you read more about it or perhaps receive training so you are more experienced? It completely depends on the situation obviously.
And know that you can never know everything, that’s where number 2 comes into play. It is ok to not have all the information, besides, things would take forever if you tried. So you will have to learn to be comfortable with ‘not knowing’ all the ins and outs.
Lack of faith simply means you don’t really believe that what you are about to do will work out well. No wonder you are hesitant. The more you can rely on faith and the more you are able to truly believe that even when things work out differently than you might currently expect, that you will be ok, the less fear you will feel. Because if you know that you will be ok there is not so much to fear.
So even if you don’t know exactly what will happen, and even if you have not done anything like this before, you can still feel faith in the outcome. This requires you to surrender and trust you will be ok. (I never said it was easy)
Lack of love means there is not enough love in your system to overrule the fear you are feeling. You can’t feel two emotions at the same time. When you feel fear you can’t also feel love in that same instant. Which means that when you can focus on love you will drown out fear.
You can start by focusing your attention on something that is easy for you to love: your partner, a family member, your pet, chocolate 😉 And allow yourself to feel the love for this person or object. As you feel the love try to increase it by spreading it wider and wider in your body, as if you are blowing air into a balloon. Infuse yourself with the love you feel and let it grow bigger, until it fills you up entirely. Then you will notice you are no longer feeling any fear.
I know it is not always easy to feel love and to truly let it into your life, especially when things are not going your way or when you are paralyzed by fear. It truly is a process and the more often you do it the easier it will become. Enjoy the journey 😉
