I’ve shared Unstuck posts before, from the Unstuck community tumblr. Because they’re good. And once again, this post from a few months ago is worth sharing.
Because we all can be, and have been, overcome with fear. We’ve all been standing face to face with our fear, and felt paralyzed. Like a deer in headlights.
But what if we could transform our fear into a power source? What if we could not only tackle our challenge – whether it’s starting a project or a life-long dream that terrifies us; or having the toughest of tough conversations with a boss, family member, colleague or friend; or asking for a promotion or taking on the person (or situation) that makes us quake in our boots – but we also could use our fear to build our confidence and our ability to move forward?
Unstuck offers suggestions on how to:
- Interrogate your fear – by asking the right questions, such as simply why am I afraid and what am I really afraid of, you can understand your fear better. This not only arms you with ideas on how to move through and conquer, but also helps you reframe your fear, so that it loses some of its ability to knock you down.
- Defuse your fear – sometimes our fears take on a life of their own, but there’s almost always a way to take away their power, which gives us more power. By giving voice to your fears, or finding a different perspective from someone around us, we can bring our fear down to a more realistic size, thereby lessening the way it looms over us.
- Transform your fear – mastering your fear means learning to experience it, release it, and move on. We can use our body, mind, and spirit to change our own perception of our fear – whether by breathing, visualizing, or reinterpreting – and once again, lessen its power over us.
- Tackle your fear – sometimes the most important thing is to simply dive in.
What I’ve learned, and what Unstuck shares, is that fear is only an emotion. It can’t harm us; it’s our reaction to fear that gets in our way. I’ve found that it’s important to remember that fear is a survival instinct – our body, mind, and spirit have evolved to be alert to, and warn us about, danger. And yet that survival instinct may be too highly evolved, or too highly honed.
When we feel fear it’s essential to investigate it – what is it trying to tell us? Is it based on reality or old, learned distortions of reality? And then it’s essential to find our way to move away from or through it – to breathe, and then interrogate, defuse, transform, and tackle – so that we can move forward and we can be our best, most Thoughtful self.
How have you turned your fear into power?
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