Is fear limiting your ability to enjoy life?

Have you ever noticed how some people are naturally able to cope with everything that life throws at them, while others seem to lose the plot with any and every inconvenience that comes their way?

Have you ever wondered what is it that makes us either resilient or susceptible to the events of our daily lives?

For many people, fear is a major aspect that is preventing them from being able to cope and move forward to create the fulfilling life that they desire.

It is important to know that if you are currently in any way unhealthy, unhappy, or generally not excited about life, you can consciously choose to do something to help yourself to ensure your future is going to be better than your present experience.

So with this in mind, let’s explore fear and see how your fears may have been sabotaging your ability to create for yourself the life that you desire.

How does fear manifest in my life?

It is those among us that have the greatest resistance to life’s energies that create for themselves the most dis-ease, stress, fear, discontentment, and are generally the unhappiest. Resistance is often just a fear of change.

Just as it is the stiffest and most inflexible trees that are the ones that break in a strong wind, it is the people who hold onto the most rigid and self-limiting thoughts that are constantly battling with their own lives.

Inflexibility in people is an attitude, and it comes from within our minds, more specifically, with the thoughts that we have which when added to all our previous inflexible thoughts create an intolerance to many of life’s normal events.

The more flexible trees, and people, are the ones that survive as they are able to bend and dance with nature’s natural flows of energy. So for us, the trick to having an easier life is to learn how to lose our fear of the unknown and try to become more at ease with life’s events.

How we think about and then interact with life on a moment-to-moment basis determines how we are feeling which results in our current emotional state of being. Even though our thoughts are neither right nor wrong, they do determine how we approach and interact with life, and therefore they affect our ability to either succeed at achieving goals or prevent us from getting there.

The problem many people have is that their current thoughts are just added to the negative and fearful thoughts that they have been having throughout their lives. By doing this they are just reinforcing the negative things they already believe about themselves and about life in general. This destructive strategy, when repeated often becomes habitual and it is by reinforcing any fearful and harmful thoughts we already hold about ourselves that we are sure to create a life filled with fear and hardship. Garbage in = garbage out!

Is this what you want for the rest of your life?

No? Then let’s learn how we can change our thoughts away from fear and towards actively creating a better life experience for ourselves.

It is often our subconscious fear of change that prevents us from improving our lives

It is just as easy to learn how to love as it is to learn how to fear- and our amazing brain will believe either one to be true. Our brain, by design, is always unconsciously seeking to reinforce what we teach it, through our thoughts and experiences, by seeking evidence that confirms what we currently believe to be true. Therefore, if we are prone to having fearful thoughts, we will attract (through the law of attraction) situations into our lives that create a feeling of fear within us.

Our subconscious beliefs, which are responsible for the majority of our thoughts, are just something we have adopted on our journey through life, and are something that we have the power to change to make our lives happier, healthier, and generally more abundant- if we choose to!

Any crisis, disease, or discomfort we encounter in our lives is a message to ourselves that we need to make changes in our lifestyle, our habits, and most importantly our thinking.

We grow in experience and ability when we stop struggling against the messages life is sending us and actually confront that which we are fearful of. Growth requires that we let go of any limiting beliefs that we have about ourselves. After we let go we are able to break free of any self-imposed restrictions that we have been living with that have bound us to live a constrained life filled with mediocrity.

So what is it that is preventing the majority of us from achieving the things we desire in this life?

Our life is the result of the beliefs we hold, (based on the experiences we have had and the choices we have made), and therefore if we are in any way dissatisfied with our life at this moment we can begin to change it by making better choices. Those of us who are in pain (emotionally, mentally, and physically), are suffering because we have not chosen the best possible responses to all situations as they are presented to us. The result of bad choices is dis-ease, which is just us being out of sync and struggling with some aspects of our life.

Therefore, it becomes important to learn to listen to our internal dialogue, as it is the reason we are who we are now and why we are where we are now. Our continuous self-talk loves to repeat beliefs that we formed when we were young, gained from our experiences, and that were programmed into us from those with influence over us. The danger with reacting to situations based on our inner dialogue is that our internal self-talk, or beliefs that we hold, may not actually be based on anything that is real.

The best course of action we can take, here and now, to help us achieve the life we want is to release the attachments we have to the past events that have contributed to us forming limiting beliefs about ourselves and our abilities. In this way, real positive change can begin to occur in our lives. Positive change is seen when we are consciously ‘creating’ the things we want instead of unconsciously accepting the things that come our way, or still actively resisting change that would benefit us.

However, most people resist this type of personal growth and development because of fear of the unknown. It’s quite common for people to experience tremendous growth and development through to a teenage rebellious stage and then settle down into a ‘normal life mode.’ It is here that the range of experiences many people are willing to expose themselves to become more limited. They become afraid, and more often than not, want to avoid feeling anxious or stressed, so rarely do they challenge the current limits of their comfort zone.

Any achievement requires that we move beyond our current limits

The same basic results are inevitable when we continue to repeat the same patterns over and over again. Sameness is uninteresting and boring and will not stimulate us to learn. Experiencing and learning, leading to constantly growing into more of who we can become is a much more interesting option. This is after all why we are living this life- our soul is here to have an experience-rich adventure.

If we never push ourselves beyond our current limits, we will never grow to be more than we currently are. We have to move beyond our current comfort zones so we can experience growth and expansion, either mentally, physically, and/or spiritually. And it is only when we are growing that we can begin to express the creativity that our soul craves for in new and exciting ways.

Why am I fearful and where does my fear come from?

Many people live with fear as part of their daily experiences. However, fear is not something that is tangible or even the same for all people. We cannot see fear, (although we can see a fearful response or action), we cannot taste fear (although we may have an unpleasant sensation in our mouths) and we cannot touch fear, (although we can touch someone who is feeling fearful).

Fear is just an emotion brought about by the thoughts that we are having and is therefore self-created, just like any other of our emotions.

If we can accept that different people fear different things we can begin to address our personal fears because we come to understand that they are specific to our thought processes. Knowing this allows us to realize that it is totally up to us whether we have specific fearful thoughts or not.

Most often, our feelings of fear are only a subconscious projection or echo of past painful experiences and learned responses. The reality is that our past only exists as memories, and as such cannot affect our present moment unless we give it the power to do so by holding onto and regurgitating undesirable thoughts and memories. When we understand this, we can take positive steps to diminish the hold that fear has over us which directly affects our ability to create an awesome life for ourselves.

Often, many of the things that people are fearful of are things or situations that they have had no direct experience of but have been programmed to fear from other people or sources of information. For example: Do you fear vampires or ghosts?

How many have you actually encountered in your lifetime?

And how often have you thought about these things so that they restrict you in some way or another from doing something that you wanted to do?

Maybe it’s spiders that you fear, or being alone, being unloved, or fear that your uncontrollable anger will hurt someone. It doesn’t matter what the fear is, what is important is that it is your fear, and it is a creation of your thoughts based on who you believe yourself to be. That’s all.

Can you now see that our fearful thoughts often have no basis in reality? And yet we act upon our thoughts and beliefs as if they are real- and the more unreal they are, the bigger the negative impact they will have on our personal health, overall well-being, and general satisfaction with life!

How can I overcome my fears?

We need to embrace our fears if we are to conquer them. Then we will be better able to regain control of our lives. We can do this bit by bit, by becoming more mindful of the present moment. When we are beginning to feel fearful or stressed, instead of blindly reacting due to past learned mental programs and emotional habits, it serves our best interests if we are able to just pause and bring our mind to the present moment.

Reacting without thought is being a victim of our past and it prevents us from exercising any free will or choice. It is far better for us to step away for a moment, breathe deeply and release the need to react. Then, after thoughtful consideration, we can respond to any situation in the most appropriate way. This will free us from repeating past mistakes.

Some people grew up learning to be fearful and helpless, while others, from the beginning, learned to look optimistically at life and be happy. Each receives that which they are looking for as it is our internal dialogue that programs our brain to create more thoughts towards either fear or joy. If you don’t like being fearful of something, take steps to confront your fear and by doing this you will change your beliefs about the fear and this is turn will positively change your thought patterns.

Constant positive self-reinforcement will help ease our fears and doubts and raise our self-esteem to enable us to continue moving forward, positively, towards our goals.

So what have we learned about fear?

Fear is humanity’s worst enemy. But it is not something we can see or touch. Fear feels real to us only because of the thoughts we are having. It is important to understand that not all fear is bad and in some cases, it is important to feel fear in the present moment, as it can save our lives when we are in immediate danger.

However, thoughts of fear-based on gossip, unreal scenarios, and past or perceived future events do not serve our highest good as they directly limit or restrict what we are willing and able to do in the present moment.

It is important to realize that most of what we fear and get stressed out about during the course of each day is actually really trivial when viewed in the greater context of our whole life.

It takes courage to acknowledge that most of what we fear is not currently relevant and that our fears are in fact leading us to live a restricted life. Fear is only fear because we believe it is. If we can become more mindful, and more aware of our thoughts, we are able to change our subconscious beliefs, which then gives us the power to positively create for ourselves the awesome and adventure-filled life that our soul desires, while in this body, on this amazing planet which we call Mother Earth!

It is by moving beyond our comfort zone and taking leaps of faith that we learn to swim with the currents of life and become a participant of life, instead of just sitting on the sidelines watching others have all the fun. A fearful person is unable to realize that life needs to be fully experienced to be understood. They don’t yet realize that if we put out an energy of trust and faith that we will be supported by the process of life itself!

Please leave any thoughts you have or experiences of overcoming a fear that you have had in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.

Shared with the intention of assisting some of you to improve your lives by getting rid of some of the fearful thoughts that may currently be restricting you.

With much love and respect,

Andrew