Taming Your Fear
We’re going to get curious about your fears, so we can stare them in the face, break them down, and get more comfortable living with them. We don't aim to dismiss your feelings—they are valid! Rather, our goal is to reduce the overwhelming nature of fears, making them more manageable and transforming them into sources of motivation and growth! Here’s how...
- List out any fears you are feeling.
- Get curious. Write questions about these fears or talk to them directly.
- It can be helpful to talk to your fear like it is a person, and you are a detective asking objective questions! “What is your intention?” “Why are you so big right now?” “What do you need to get back into the passenger seat?” “Why do you have so much power over me?”
Answer those questions. Write down a couple takeaways from your reflections.
Making Room for Fear
We have fear for a reason, and there’s a place for it in our lives, just not in the driver’s seat. It’s not realistic (or suggested) to get rid of fear altogether. But let’s figure out how we can manage it so that we can be comfortable living with it. Here’s a favorite quote around fear, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic:
It isn’t always comfortable or easy - carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean - but it’s always worth it, because if you can’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting. And that would be a pity, because your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here...It’s what we all want.
Love Over Fear
To fully tackle your fear and navigate through change, well, you have to show yourself grace and compassion. We’re going to start exploring what it feels like to choose love over fear. When fear comes up, love and compassion are powerful antidotes. Above all, it is important to remember that love is our natural state.
Love is our natural state, while fear is a learned response from our experiences here. The only meaning in any challenge or obstacle is the meaning we assign to it, and we have a choice in these moments to declare what that meaning is for us. Re-attuning to love is not so much about ignoring or denying fear as it is about peeling back the layers, releasing the armor, and allowing a pure fullness of experience.
Triangle Breathing
We're going to close out this module with an approachable breathwork practice that can be helpful to bring your rational brain back online. This is an act of self-compassion.
Below is a diagram on how to practice triangle breathing. Click here to listen to a guided triangle breathwork.
