Befriending Fear and Self Doubt

Fear is not an emotion that needs to be avoided. It’s also not an emotion that you need to give a lot of energy to. Fear is information. Period. Fear notifies you that you are moving into unknown territory. When you feel fear, acknowledge it!

So many of us go around avoiding fear. We will do most anything to avoid feeling fear. The problem is that what we resist persists so the more you run from fear, the louder it gets.

When I feel fear, I sit down and acknowledge it. Don’t get me wrong, I still find myself avoiding fear too, but now I may avoid it for an hour or two verses days, weeks, months or even years that I used to spend running from it.

When I notice my fear pattern. I go somewhere where I can be alone for 10-15 minutes. I close my eyes, visualize sitting down next to my fear and I ask “What are you afraid of?”

I let the fear tell me what it is afraid of. I give it a voice. Then I thank it. After all, fear is just trying to keep you safe. Fear’s job is to send you signals when it notices something out of the ordinary. So thank fear for doing it’s job.

Then, you are back in control. You get to decide where to go from here. I usually thank my fear and then explain to it that I am an adult now. I have things under control. I can be trusted and so on. In other words, I let the fear know that I appreciate it’s concern but I know what I’m doing. Or at least I can handle the situation.

Think of your fear as an overly concerned parent. We’ve all heard well intentioned advice about how to live our lives and how we better be careful. Do we listen to that advice? Not usually. We thank the person for their concern and then we move forward. This is the same concept you can apply when fear crops up in your life.

When you feel fear, get excited! This is a signal that you are expanding. Just assure that scared part of you that you see what’s happening and you have things under control. Sometimes you can do this once and it works, other times you may need to remind your fearful self several times within the hour.

The more you move forward and prove to your fear that you are in charge and that you can handle situations, the more you build trust within yourself and the less it will feel the need to notify you of every little shift.

I hope you find this helpful! Enjoy your day!​