Moving Confidently Ahead - Step 5

Ignoring or plowing through your fears is not the answer. As we saw last week, parts of you hold beliefs that create your fears and unless these beliefs, opinions and concerns are addressed, you are going to continue to experience resistance to overcoming your fears. Step 5 in my 5-Step process is Setting Conditions. As part of a dialogue with your resistant part, you will be asking it for conditions to help it feel comfortable so that it can become your ally moving forward. These conditions should come from the part itself and help to address its specific concerns. In the example from last week, if your part is keeping you from speaking your truth because it does not want to feel rejected, your part may suggest conditions like these:

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Exploring the Root Cause of your Fears – Step 4

Ever wonder where your fears come from?  Sometimes they may feel foreign to you and you may think - who is creating these fears?

Step 4 in my 5-Step process for overcoming fears is about talking to the parts of you that hold beliefs and create the fears. By parts I mean those voices in your head that have strong opinions and viewpoints.  Like your Inner Critic or the I want everyone to like me part that holds the belief that if you speak your truth you may get someone mad at you and they won’t like or respect you anymore.  In this example, this part of you creates fears that hold you back so that you won’t experience the pain of having someone dislike or reject you.  This part of you was likely created when you experienced the pain of being rejected in the past so it is very sensitive to those feelings. 
 
You can see that the part really wants what it thinks is best for you – avoiding the pain of rejection.  However, that part was likely created when you were very young when it was more difficult for you to deal with the emotion of feeling rejected or not loved.   
 
With my clients and in my Living Fear-Free course, I teach a process of talking to these parts, exploring when and why they were created.  They often hold great insights into why you are the way you are and why you feel like you automatically create fears or strong reactions around certain things without understanding why.  Engaging with your parts really allows you to get to the root cause of your fears and to work with the parts to establish new strategies that are aligned with your current goals and life direction.  By doing this, your parts become your allies in moving forward and living a fear-free life!
 
Next week I will talk about the final step in the 5-Step Process - setting conditions.

Owning Leads to Freedom - Step 3

This week I am going to talk about Step 3 in my 5-Step process of overcoming and learning from your fears.  Step 2 was about accepting the emotion without judging it; this step is about taking ownership of the fear. 

It may sound funny however assuming responsibility for your fear is very empowering – it puts you in the driver’s seat.  If you don’t own it, you don’t have the power to transform it.  The more you own it, the more powerful you become.  ‘I created the fear’, also means ‘I can choose to think another way and create different emotions’. Blaming others, parents, doctors etc. is giving away your power.

Importantly, this step is not about blaming yourself, being hard on yourself or feeling guilty about creating fears. It is really about bringing more awareness to your process of generating thoughts so that you can get off autopilot and let go of the feeling and the belief that fears are automatically generated without you having any say in the matter. 

A quote I love from Eckhart Tolle – A New Earth:

• Awareness is the greatest agent of change.

If you practice these first three steps with your fears, you will notice that the fears lose their grip on you and that a gap gradually starts to appear between events and your reaction. In this gap you can start to choose how you want to respond thus opening the door to more confidence and greater freedom!