“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.” - Karl Augustus Menninger
What is holding you back? In your relationships, creativity, education, work, or life; what is holding you back?
Whatever you answer, it will in many cases distill down in some form to feelings of fear.
Yes, feelings of fear can be useful to keep yourself alive, but many times feelings of fear are just an emotion you are currently stuck within like quicksand along your path. It’s not the feelings of fear that hinder your expansion, but rather your fixation on the issue and related beliefs instead of moving through it.
Here is a tenet within Soul Expansion: If you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, then you’re always comfortable.
The intention is not for you to live in a state of anxiety, but the opposite: to discover how to healthfully and actively move through feelings of fear so that you’re living your life.
In fact, our Breakthrough Feelings of Fear program was developed to guide you intuitively and expertly through your biggest feelings of fear as you reclaim your aliveness, passion, and authentic expression. You will deepen your ability to live from your soul to be fully present. You will discover how to explore, accept and move beyond feelings of fear with ease, fun and joyfulness!
If you would like to live this way, take your first step with the gift of a Complimentary Session or call (800) 661-3650.
Until then, you may be asking what can you do about feelings of fear? How can you move through them? I've assembled a handful of tips below to help.
1. ACCEPT YOUR FEELINGS OF FEAR TO BECOME STRONGER
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
Every time you walk and befriend feelings of fear you gain the three important qualities that Eleanor Roosevelt mentions above; strength, courage and confidence. The next thing that comes along will be easier to handle.
And if you have to handle a big feeling of fear, whatever it may be, and later realize you survived it, many things in life you may have feared previously seem to shrink. Those feelings of fear become smaller. They might even disappear.
You might discover the issue you thought was connected to a substantial feeling of fear before wasn’t that much to be afraid of at all. Everything is relative. Every triumph, problem, feeling of fear, and experience becomes bigger or smaller depending to what you compare it to, but to gain a wider perspective of human experience and expand, you really must step up and through your feelings of fear.
2. FACING YOUR FEAR CAN BE SURPRISINGLY ANTICLIMATIC
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What a relevant and encompassing quote. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz; neither Dorothy, Tinman, Scarecrow or the Lion could easily conjure the courage to confront the “great and powerful Oz,” rather it simply took the assertive nature of Toto to tug down the curtain and reveal that the overwhelming figure they all had feared was just a tiny old man behind a curtain.
From a distance - and in your mind - things may seem very difficult and frightening, but when you actually step up and take action, I think many of us have been surprised of how easily the beard of that bully just comes off. Why? Let’s move on to the next tip…
3. TAKE ACTION AND GET BUSY
“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.” - Swedish proverb
You can’t sit around thinking and waiting for courage and confidence to come knocking on the door. If you do, you may just experience the opposite effect. The more you think, the more feelings of fear you build within.
We often create the scary monsters solely in our brain.
Maybe because of things we have learned from the news, the TV, or movies, we often think so much about something that our minds start to generate totally unlikely horror scenarios of what may happen.
As you may have noticed in your own life, 80%-90% of what we worry about never really comes true. Instead things can become anticlimactic when we take action. As stated in the opening quote for tip #2 above, the "beard of the bully" comes off surprisingly easy if we just step up and take action.
And many times, we get the courage we need after we have expanded through what we feared - not the other way around.
4. FEAR IS OFTEN BASED ON INACCURATE INTERPREATION OR MISSING INFORMATION
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.” - Unknown
As humans, we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often unconsciously seek negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just a small handful of experiences, by misjudging situations, or through some trivial miscommunication.
When you get too identified with your thoughts, you’ll believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practice may be to not take your thoughts too seriously. Most of the time both these - and your memory - are inaccurate.
As you'll learn through Soul Expansion, it is very easy to trick your mind and we offer several simple examples throughout the process. Why? Well, because we want you to "fire your brain" and get tuned with your soul... your essence.
This is a good thing because it opens you up to re-examining old beliefs that you have based on experiences you’ve interpreted and integrated when you were not as emotionally mature. It opens you up to try again and see what happens this time instead of staying stuck in thought, inaction, and feelings of fear.
Want a quick example? Great! I have many, but let's start with something simple; do you remember the last motion picture you watched? Got it? Say the title out loud. Now, let me be clear that this information is incorrect. Why? There is no such thing as a motion picture; it is a series of still frames that move in rapid succession. Your mind "thinks" there is motion. It's so easy to trick the brain. Want another simple example? Sure, I've got plenty that we use throughout the various Soul Expansion programs!
WHAT COLOR ARE THE DOTS?
Try this one. Look at the photo to the left (likely above if on a mobile). What color are the dots? Again, it's so simple to fool your brain. What do you think we do with feelings of fear? The feeling of fear itself is accurate, the meaning or reality we then make of it usually is not.
5. DON'T CLING TO YOUR ILLUSION OF SAFTEY
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller
Why do people sit on their hands? Is it just because they become paralyzed with feelings of fear? I’d say no. A big reason why people don’t face their feelings of fear is because they think they are safer where they are right now, but the truth is what Helen Keller says; safety is mostly a superstition. It is created in your mind to make you seem safe, but there is no safety out there really. It is all uncertain and unknown.
You may get laid off.
Someone may break up with you and leave.
Illness will probably strike.
Death will certainly strike in your surroundings and at some point come to visit you too.
Who knows what will happen?
This superstition of safety is not just something negative, it’s also created by your mind so you can function in life. There’s little advantage in exerting energy about what could happen in a minute, day, week, month, or years from now. In fact, that can lead to paranoia. However, there is also not that much point in clinging to an illusion of safety. So you need to find balance where you don’t obsess about the uncertainty, but also recognize that it is there and live accordingly.
As you stop clinging to your safety life also becomes a whole lot more exciting and interesting. You are no longer as confined by an illusion and realize that you set your limits for what you can do, and to a large extent, create your own freedom in the world. You are no longer building walls to keep yourself safe as those walls wouldn’t protect you anyway.
6. Be curious.
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” - James Stephens
When you are stuck in feelings of fear you are likely closed up. You tend to create division in your mind, and therefore your life. You may also create barriers between you and other people.
Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up, and when you are open and eager, you have more awareness and solutions than focusing on your feelings of fear.
Curiousness also opens you up to gain understanding of something, and with understanding, the vague fog of feeling fearful begins to disappear.
The emotions you experience are often a result of what you focus your energies upon. Change what you focus on and you can change your emotions about that situation.
How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity. Remember all the things it helped to discover and experience, then stay with it. Curiosity is a habit. The more curious you are, the more curious you become, and over time it becomes more of a natural part of you.
7. Remove separation. Remove fear.
“Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.” - Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture
The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation, and incessantly plays the comparison game. The game where people are different compared to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates feelings of fear. Doing the opposite reduces or removes feelings of fear.
There is no real separation between beings. We are one and the same.
One thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend. Another one is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet (or them in you).
There is an underlying – usually unconscious - intention in interactions; either it asks us how we are different or how we are the same as this person. The first mindset is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through being superior or a victim); the second one creates warmth, openness, and curiosity within. From the latter there is no need to focus on feelings of fear or judgement anymore.
This is of course is not easy, especially if you have held the first belief for many years, but you can get insight into this by integrating the steps above. As you walk with your feelings of fear, the barriers and separation you have built in your mind decrease. You come closer and experience more of a connection to other people.
With action, curiousness, and understanding we come closer to each other. We gain a greater understanding of ourselves and others. It becomes easier to see them in you, and you in them.
You are cordially invited to the rest of your life! Take the next step towards Soul Expansion with the gift of a Complimentary Session or call (800) 661-3650.
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