F.E.A.R.-Yes, Or F.E.A.R.-Less

What do you fear, and how real are your fears? The most common fears I see and hear from clients (and others!!) include the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of change and - believe it or not - the fear of success. As real as these fears may seem, most of them are only imaginary (not real) and totally made-up (fantasy). I like to refer to these made-up scenarios as stories. Part of our humanness includes an amazing ability to make up stories and assumptions, and then to believe them and fabricate some F.E.A.R.: Fictitious Events Appearing Real.

Your mind, as wonderful as it is, has great difficulty in discerning between what’s real and what’s made up or imagined as a story. Your mind tends to perceive all your fantasies and imaginings as being real.

The primary functions of your mind are protection and survival.

Because of this, if your mind perceives a threat, it activates the fight or flight mechanism which prepares your body to go into battle or to flee. When you then feel the rush of the adrenaline flow through your body (triggered by the activation of this fight or flight mechanism), this just validates your perceived “story”: There must indeed be some threat. Often you end up pumped up and keyed up for no true reason because the threat was not real after all. This reaction—adrenaline and the fight or flight mechanism—also takes a huge toll on your body and your health. Prolonged exposure to excessive ongoing adrenaline releases will eventually tear down your immune system.

Plus, whether or not you are aware of it, you will tend to believe your stories to be true. It then becomes easy to build one false story upon another. From there, you risk constructing an entire fear-based belief system and way of life—a life that’s very limiting and restrictive and founded on a couple of made-up rear-based stories.

But there is hope and another choice...F.E.A.R.: Face Everything And Rejoice.

When you face your fears and confront them rather than letting your assumptions run wild in your mind, you’ll find much of what you used to fear was not nearly as threatening as you once believed it was. You can begin to dispel the stories and assumptions, and you’ll get freedom from all this old fear. The primary difference is this model of Face Everything and Rejoice emanates from a place of conscious and empowered choice. It is the realization that your initial reaction may not be reality based.

This is a conscious model of responding instead of unconsciously and blindly reacting. Sometimes, moving from the destructive, limiting, unconscious and highly reactive F.E.A.R. to the hopeful, conscious and more responsive F.E.A.R, and separating false fear from fact, is as simple as asking yourself two simple questions:

"Is it true?" and "Where’s the evidence?"

When you begin to really look at, examine, and evaluate situations, you’ll often find your initial reaction may have been more intense, emotionally-based and irrational (a story) than actual reality.

Three other great questions to ask yourself when you start to feel fear are, “And then what?”, “What is the worst that could happen?” and “Can I handle that?” Ask and answer these questions and you’ll allow yourself to see these preconceived threats more clearly, which allows you to create a more grounded response. This response will flow consciously from making a choice, which is always more empowering, rather than from some old, out-dated unconscious conditioning.

When you respond this way, you’ll discover you can, and will, act in a much more adaptable manner. In other words, you’ll handle these situations by overriding the fight or flight mode, and create the intention for yourself that everything will be okay.

There is one affirming phrase I’d like to recommend to you above all the others:

I can handle this!

When you’re able to say this to yourself as a self-intervention (even if you don’t fully believe it), your mind starts to accept it. Remember, your mind may perceive some things as real whether or not they are. So, just as your mind accepts the negative, false fear-based stories it makes up as “real”, it will also tend to believe, even before you actually feel it to be true, the self-reassurance and confidence you instill merely because you think it and say it to yourself.

You might as well use this dynamic to your benefit and to your advantage. Once you’ve begun to formulate a different and more positive response, you may finally fully realize there is no threat at all.

You have a choice: The old F.E.A.R. or the new F.E.A.R. I know which one you desire and deserve, and I support you in creating a life of freedom through conscious responsiveness and self-intervention.

It is time you choose to rejoice!