fear

Facts About Fear

 By Gail Brenner on December 30, 2010

1. Fear-motivated thoughts are all about “can’t.” They create a negative, imagined scenario about the future. Here’s the truth: you don’t know what is going to happen, so these thoughts can’t possibly be true. Buy into these thoughts, and you are inviting limitation. Let them float on by, and you will see what is actually true for you.
2. Fearful thoughts are designed to keep you safe and limited. They are not wisdom, and they are not truth. You get to choose what to follow.
3. Fear always includes physical sensations. Learn to recognize these, and receive them as they are with an open heart.  Channel the energy of fear into excitement and enthusiasm.
4. Fear makes us think that something negative will happen, when the truth is that we don’t know what is going to happen. Become comfortable with not knowing so that fear doesn’t rule you.
5. Resisting fear strengthens it. The antidote is awareness – being willing to directly experience fear as it appears to you in the moment, recognizing the thoughts and physical sensations.
6. The goal is not to get rid of fear, as you don’t have the power to make this happen. But you do have the power to change the way you relate to fear. Learn to receive it with curiosity and a loving heart, get to know how it spins thoughts that deflate the things you are enthusiastic about. But don’t feel like something is wrong or you have failed if it continues to appear. Simply meet it lovingly every time.
7. A surge of fear tends to arise directly after a moment of truth. Say that an idea appears in your mind about something you’d love to do. Soon after, you might notice that your mind is filled with reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t do it. Recognize that this is fear speaking.
8. Recognizing the presence of fear allows you to make conscious decisions. You have the clarity to see what fear is guiding you to do, and you can consider what you really want.
9. Fear is not the enemy. It can be the voice of reason, caution, and practicality that serves you well at times.
10. It takes energy to resist fear. Getting to know it and allowing it to be lets your body and mind relax, as the fight is over. This opens a space for creativity, wonder, awe, love, beauty, inspiration.

Thank you Gail, for this wonderful list.

Have you ever honestly thought about how much of your life is ruled by fear? How many decisions you make ever day because of fear? Mostly it's a fear of consequences. Jail or other personal reactions to you what you do. Speeding tickets, a pissed off lover. Fired from your job. These all keep us from living the life we would like to live.

Some fear is healthy. Most is not. Fear keeps me from driving fast. The fear that I'll get a really expensive ticket. I suppose that fear is valid. I don't jump of bridges or other high spots because I have a fear of the sudden stop at the bottom. Also healthy. Probably keeps me alive, or at least out of the hospital. So, not all fear is bad.

But then there are all the other things we fear every day. Change, success, making someone unhappy, trying something new. Fear of failure keeps us from trying, as does fear of success. What do I fear? What keeps me from living the life I want to live? From being healthy and happy? I've never been able to answer that question before. Not honestly. I'm still working on the answers. I don't have all of them yet, but I have many more than none.

I suppose in all honesty it's a two fold question. First, what is it you fear and secondly, why do you have this fear? Is it a rational fear? Like a rational thought, a fear should fit the same criteria. What is it that is keeping us from success, from losing weight, from doing what we want to do? Fear of failure? You can't fail if you don't try? But isn't being miserable a form of failure? If you can't stand the way things are, what have you to lose by changing them?

I read someplace (and I've mentioned it before) "what is being fat doing for you?". The other side of that question is, what is it you fear about not being fat? There must be something stopping me, if there wasn't it wouldn't be such an issue. So what is it? I don't know yet. I will figure this out. I will crack this code, solve this puzzle, find this answer.

What else is it I fear? It's not the big things that get most people. I have no fear of death, or of the unknowable. I don't seek answers in theology. But there are things holding me back from doing what I want to do. Fear of failure is a huge one with me. Though failing and not trying are pretty much the same in the end, are they not?

I wonder if it has something to do with all the change and chaos I experienced as a child. Into young adulthood even. So much moving. Different houses, different cities, different states. Always something different. Constantly changing. Never improving. Same shit different spot pretty much sums up my younger life. Dad seems to always think the grass was greener in a different spot and never bothered to water his own lawn.

I don't know, it seems like I learn new things about myself every day lately. Some new corner of my mind will suddenly come into the light.The shadows will be lifted and I can see what has been hidden for so long.