The very normal or common response I think a lot of us have to fear is to simply avoid that thing which we view as scary. I’ve been experimenting with facing my fears more lately and it’s taught me a thing or two that I hope may provide a different perspective for you. Fear isn’t just something to take a deep breath and jump head first into. It’s a little more complicated than that.
For some context, a lot of my personal fears come through when I share who I am with others. It’s scary to open up. It’s scary to share what’s on my heart. It’s scary to put myself out there. Yet, I crave that relational intimacy that comes from being open.
So, we can know what we want but, at the end of the day, the challenge is to move past the F E A R.
Where do these fears come from?
Before we try to overcome a fear, it helps to know where it originated. Fear doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It comes from learned patterns we’ve experienced or things we have been told repeatedly. Sometimes fears are very subtle and, as I said before, we can navigate life quite fine just avoiding those things. Other times, the fear seems to affect E V E R Y T H I N G.
When I fear sharing who I am with others, that could be a result of numerous times I opened up and was not understood, or the times I shared how I felt and was rejected.
In fact, we all can take our fears and use them to train ourselves to stop before even getting started. All we’d need to do is look at the past, focus on our mistakes or how things didn’t work out, and use that as an excuse to self-abandon now.
To dismiss your desires now.
To choose the overly safe path now.
To not be honest now.
To say that what we want now is not more important than our fear.
I used to ask my friends who were more inclined towards risk-taking how they do it–how do they move past fear? One thing I remember hearing was that it isn’t about risks not being scary to them, they just learned to grow thicker skin. Essentially, you want to do the thing so badly that you can’t get it out of your mind, so why not do it and embrace gratitude for the moment you decided to G O F O R I T?!?! No matter what the result may be! Doing that once lessens the fear, doing it twice makes it easier, and continuing makes you believe in yourself. Challenging yourself to confront your fear, even in small, bite-sized ways, builds your sense of confidence and trust in yourself.
The real question is: how do we let go of the fear?
We can want to overcome a fear but that isn’t enough to help us move through the actions required to face the fear. As I was recently shown by a dear friend, a lot of the ways we hold ourselves back has more to do with the kind of person we think we are. The scripts we keep reciting about who we are have us reinforcing consistency of our character and not allowing flexibility for us as a human.
An over-association with any one quality of our character can be enough to make us think we *have to* be a certain way. For me, I can let my own pride get in the way of being honest and open with others. I sit on my high horse and expect things from other people–for them to meet my needs–without me having to come down to ground level to actually engage in the natural way I know I would benefit from engaging.
It’s not always pride that keeps us stuck in our fear trap.
It can be our ego.
Shame.
Guilt.
Expectations.
Worries.
Holding onto the past.
Victimhood.
Trauma.
Perhaps a combination of these and perhaps something I did not name here. The thing is, these are all character traits that don’t need to define us. We may have lived with them for so long that we don’t know how to define ourselves without them. That is part of the work. These traits becoming limiting and get in the way of us being our true selves and give us excuses, justifications, and rationalizations for why we should stay safe and not face our fear.
I want you to remember–and this is a reminder for myself just as much as you–every time we choose to let fear run the show, we engage in self-abandonment.
When you practice moving from that place of feeling, from that place of trusting soul callings, from knowing nothing is a mistake and everything is just a lesson to clarify your path… you take inspired action. You move past the fear and you choose you. You choose to trust that the thing you want, no matter how much fear you may hold about it, is calling to you for a reason. It won’t stop calling. So, can you trust yourself to come head-to-head with fear for the chance to get the thing you want most?