Fear will never stop you

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It is your resistance to fear that stops you. Most of what we call “fear” is resisted fear.

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Fear doesn’t have very good PR, does it? Both you and I have been taught from a very early age to resist our fear, to push it down, to hide it from others, if not from ourselves.

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We treat fear as an enemy

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And when we treat fear as our enemy, it will be our enemy. When we resist our fear, then our fear resists us.

All of our energy, and all of our resourcefulness get tied up in an internal knot. It's a battle of us against ourselves.

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Battling your fear becomes a war of you against yourself!

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Place the palms of your two hands together right now

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Press them against each other as hard as you can. This is what you do with your fear. You have no energy, and no resourcefulness left over after fighting with yourself.

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However, when we treat fear as a friend, fear becomes our friend.

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Fear is just energy

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Animals, who cannot resist their fear, are generally very resourceful when frightened.

They can fight or flee very effectively.

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Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to resist their own internal processing. We have the ability to start and maintain a civil war.

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When you embrace your fear, when you take deep breaths and say to yourself, “Holy moly and jeepers weepers, am I scared!” many times, then you can tap into the energy of your fear,  opening up the possibility of using its energy to serve you, to serve your vitality, and to serve your commitments.

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Step by step, it's simple

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The first step in acknowledging your fear is to distinguish your fear from your resistance to your fear.

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For example, if you notice that you are worrying, then you are resisting your fear. Worry is an attempt to do away with fear. Worry is a resistance to fear. In most cases, stress is a resistance to fear. It is a choice of courage to find the fear that you are resisting inside your stress.

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See undoing fear for the full process of how to un-resist your fear and turn your fear into a friend.

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The many ugly faces of resisted fear

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Although it is beyond the scope of this suite to explain why all of the following are often, either fully or partially, the symptomatic results of resisted fear, I suggest that you experiment with the idea that they are.

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• feeling betrayed

• depression

• cynicism

• guilt

• resentment

• hatred

• laziness

• low self-esteem

• lack of self-confidence

• efficiency

• feeling overwhelmed

• feeling pressured

• indecisiveness

• busyness

• procrastination

• worry

• anxiety

• shame

• expectations

• bitterness

• blaming others

• stress

• over-controlling

• frustration

• lying

• lack of self-expression

• perfectionism

• boredom

• complaining

• crankiness

• trying to prove something

• resignation

• feeling dispirited

• impatience

• seriousness

• defensiveness

• over-protectiveness

• ingratitude

• shoulding

• obsessiveness

• petulance

• stubbornness

• inflexibility

• self-consciousness

• righteousness

• animosity

• callousness

• criticism of others

• self-criticism

• arrogance

• feeling foolish

• nagging

• bitchiness

• rebelliousness

• showing disrespect

• rudeness

• jealousy

• envy

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The simple steps...

 

Once you’ve identified a suspected symptom of resisted fear, regardless of whether or not you can feel it as fear, the second step is to breathe deeply and relax into the fear, speaking/shouting as loudly as possible

(given the immediate environment), “Holy moly and jeepers weepers, am I scared!”

 

Speak this loudly, slowly, with a silly, wacky voice.

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By doing this, you will begin to align with your energy (so that you can use it), rather than continuing to resist the energy of your fear. Notice how, in doing this, the symptoms (worry, guilt, resentment, etc.)

lessen or disappear!

 

I invite you to find at least five occasions today where you are resisting your fear.

 

Then breathe!

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"Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead."

—Jerry Gillies (American author, speaker)

 

"Feel the fear and do it anyway."

—Susan Jeffers (American author, speaker)

"People always make the wolf more formidable than he is."

—French Proverb