The Other Side of Fear...
We worry. We fret. We fear. Sometimes our fears and worries are justified, but more often than not, we are simply spinning our wheels, focused on events that are unlikely to happen. I promised I would write more about fear and was surprised at the courage I had to summon to address the subject. Fear is a big topic! There are so many ways fear stops us in our tracks, and we don’t even realize it’s fear that is in the driver’s seat.
Fear has been a method of controlling people since the dawn of time.
Both religion and government have employed fear tactics to keep people obeisant and in line for centuries. Historically speaking, fear has been very effective for keeping people under control.
If you didn’t obey the tenets of the proper church, you were assigned to an afterlife of hell and damnation. God was to be feared – if you misbehaved, God smote you. If you didn’t conform to the mandates of the church, you were ostracized, shunned or excommunicated.
Government created laws to maintain a sense of order and prevent anarchy. Break the law, you went to prison! Or at the very least, it was going to cost you – financially or perhaps a body part or two, maybe even your neck.
Uppity women were stoned or burned for not following societal rules. Women, having no rights of their own, lived in fear of not having a man to provide for them.
As children, we were taught to be careful, don’t be reckless, play it safe, to settle and be satisfied with the known. We were led to believe known is safe, unknown is unsafe. This belief was passed from generation to generation, causing us to live lives that were safe, but only a fraction of what was possible.
Fear kept everyone in their proper place.
While much has changed, we are still a fear-driven society.
Think not? Watch the evening news. We fear someone will take what we have away from us, either through violence, illness or mismanagement. We fear people who look, think and act differently than we do. Fear always breeds more fear, it becomes what we believe, affirming and validating our stance in fear. The spiral seems endless.
We fear failure, we fear success.
I think we can all relate to fear of failure. We fear falling short and disappointing ourselves and others. We fear appearing foolish, or not good enough. But fear of success? It hardly makes sense. We set goals, we work hard, we manifest our intentions, how could we fear success?
The fear of success is subtle and pervasive, often sabotaging us before we begin. If we were to succeed beyond our wildest imagination, we would be forced to leave our old life behind. We fear what people will think of us when we realize our goals. They won’t understand us and will leave us if we succeed.
Fear is the subtext which stops us from becoming this new thing we say we want to become because most of all, we fear change. Let’s release our fear of success and failure so we can begin to embrace the value of new experience. It’s time to grow!
We fear love and we fear solitude.
Why would we close our hearts to love? We all desire to love and be loved. We spend so much of our time and attention on our love relationships. Songs, poetry and our favorite stories all revolve around love, or lack thereof. We fantasize about love. Yet, we fear getting our hearts broken, perhaps more than any other fear. The courage required to risk seeking love brings out the warrior or weinie in all of us.
Conversely, we stay in relationships beyond their expiration date because we fear being alone. We fear for our financial stability if we were to leave. We fear being the crazy person left all alone in their old age with no one left to care for us. No one will ever love us again. We fear facing our own insecurities and issues when there’s no one left to blame. So we stay, deadening our hearts and our spirits.
Focusing on nourishing our souls and our own ultimate self-care will remove all fear from love. When we truly love ourselves, as is and without fear, we can bring true and unconditional love to others in our lives.
Do not let fear take the wheel and steer.
As you choose to grow, you will outgrow certain situations, people and things. When you deny yourself an opportunity for growth, you are usually honoring fear. Try not to be too hard on yourself as we have centuries of fear-based conditioning telling us to play it safe, don’t over-reach. Become an observer of fear and fear tactics. Become aware of the amount of control you allow fear to victimize your life.
The following are suggestions for taking an opportunity to move through fear:
1) Feel the fear but do it anyway. This is where courage comes into discussion. If it makes your heart skip a beat in excitement and you light up at the thought, go for it! Always take a chance to grow by moving through fear.
2) Silence your inner critic. You know, the inner voice that says, you can’t, you’re not good enough/smart enough/whatever ENOUGH. Your ego wants to keep you playing it safe, so it’s going to throw all sorts of impossibilities at you, but as previously stated, safe isn’t where your soul wants you to go. Your soul wants you to grow. Tell your inner critic, “Thanks, but I’ve got this.”
3) Don’t be afraid of failure. Failure is one of life’s greatest teachers if we do not get lost in the shame, disappointment or fear of failure.
4) Honor your intuition. Sometimes you need to listen to your intuition. If the fear you are feeling is your intuition screaming at you, “Oh, Hell No!” please honor and heed the warning. If your inner critic is taking aim at you, that’s just regular old fear talking, but if you are feeling fear in your gut, and every fiber of your being is screaming No, please pay attention. This type of fear is valuable for keeping us out of harm’s way.
5) Fact check your fear. Let’s address the elephant under the rug. Take a hard look at where your fear is coming from. Is it even valid? If it’s dogma that you are using to validate your fear, please stop and look at the truth of the matter. This will also require courage as you will be addressing fears that have been planted deep into your ancestral DNA. You are stronger than your fears!
6) Stop watching the evening news. Stop feeding fear. It is that simple, stop feeding fear.
7) Fear and faith cannot co-exist. Let faith override fear. Do not be too proud to ask for help in overcoming fear, through prayer or positive intention. Whether you reach out to God, the Universe, a Higher-Power, or your Higher Self, unlimited support is there for us if we only ask.
8) Practice ultimate self-care. As you take steps to honor and care for yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, you will find that fear has less hold on your life. The more you feed and nourish your soul, the stronger and more resilient you will become in the face of fear.
Fear can be likened to an archeological dig. The more fear we dig and unearth, chip away, and sweep off, the more treasure we uncover. As layer upon layer of fears are removed and brushed aside, the more we will open our lives to greater possibility. We nourish our soul when we step over our fears and into the lives we know we are meant to live.
““Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ”
