A little over a year ago, I wrote about finding inspiration by feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
Unless we’re running from or fighting off wild boars or something, whatever the thing is that we’re fearing is made up, imaginery — even if it seems very real in the moment.
I came across a little exercise that Susan Hinds of Xocai Healthy Chocolate shared about how to get to the root of whatever it is we’re fearing. Sometimes knowledge itself is transformative.
She was reading The Success Principles
To help you better understand how we actually bring unfounded fear into our lives, make a list of things you are afraid to do. This is not a list of things you are afraid of, such as being afraid of spiders, but things you’re afraid to do, such as pick up a spider.
- Ask my boss for a raise
- Ask Sally out for a date
- Go skydiving
- Leave my kids home alone with a sitter
- Leave this job that I hate
- Take 2 weeks away from the office
- Ask my friends to look at my new business opportunity
- Delegate any part of my job to others
Now go back and restate each fear using the following format:
I want to ________________, and I scare myself by imaging _______________ .
The key words are I scare myself by imagining. All fear is self-created by imagining some negative outcome in the future.
What do you think of that?
What in your life are you afraid of doing that leaves you immobilized, right where you are in life rather than where you want to be?
I challenge you to take a few minutes to do this exercise for yourself to see what you discover about yourself.
Dov Baron said in his experiential program, Attracting Force, that "All fear exists in either the past or the future. In ‘the now,’ there is only love. Step out of fear and into love."
Isn’t that great? Isn’t that powerful?
If we substitute fear with love, what is there that we wouldn’t do?
