Nothing stirs up your fears more than taking a risk. Any option challenging you to leave your zone of comfort and security can seem like a threat to your survival. Although I know this reluctance to change comes from the ego, that is not enough to keep me from freezing up from making life decisions that call for new beginnings. I can easily talk myself out of new and necessary course corrections by my what-iffing them to death.
Concentrating on what might go wrong is a sure way to stop any action you are contemplating and make you leave things as they are. This following narrative illustrates this phenomenon.
A woman sits at the window waiting for her husband to come home. She knows that when he returns, he will be drunk and beat her. One day she sees a woman pass by who is wearing a coat that looks just like hers, and she realizes with a shock that she might be able to make her escape by walking there herself. She goes to the hall closet, puts on her coat and opens the front door. When she opens the door, she recoils at all the possibilities that might present themselves in her new life. She closes the door, takes her coat off, and takes up her old place at the window, once again waiting for her husband to come home
Most of us recognize the sad reality in this story. Fearing what may happen kills your curiosity, and without inquisitiveness there is no desire to grow.
This fear of the unknown is what fueled a time of depression I suffered in my mid-thirties. The constant evaluation of all possibilities kept me in a circular thinking pattern that kept me frozen, for no alternative guaranteed a smooth course.
Living fearlessly is not as hard as you think
We developed our fears from the moment we started to judge things as good or bad. Remind yourself of how a small child behaves, they learn through trial and error. If they fail, they get up and try again until they succeed (or lose interest trying) and then they move on to something else.
There are three principles you must engage to live fearlessly;
1) See your experiences as lessons you haven’t yet learned. Every path you take in life has countless possibilities and lessons for your evolution. Take the promotion and you own a new set of challenges. Turn down the promotion and you open the door to different challenges.
2) Everything you need is within you. If you are still alive, then you can assume you have handled every challenge that has come your way. It wasn’t easy, but you did it, and there were times you didn’t expect you would. Use these experiences as proof you got what it takes to deal with whatever comes your way.
3) See yourself being successful no matter what you do. We fear things because we want to control the outcome. But nobody has that kind of power and control. The fact is you will be successful no matter what you do, but success will be defined differently than by how much money, power and status you end up with.
You have nothing to fear
Things never turn out as badly as we think they will, but even when they do, oftentimes our most dreaded outcome becomes our most unexpected triumph or blessing.
Go about life expecting the best. Have faith the Universe is conspiring with you to create your greatest good. Although sometimes it is scary, make decisions that inspire you to grow and evolve. Fight the entropy to stay comfortable and content, this is a prison that will cause you to decay. Remove the phrase “what if” from your vocabulary. Expect that you can convert any possibility into your greatest achievements.
Live fearlessly and you will become the creator of an extraordinary life.
Remember, paying gratitude for your life forward will reward you with much joy and contentment.
Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash
