Fear: How It's Secretly Manipulating Your Life

Understanding what fear looks & feels like in your life can help you recognize it, understand how its holding you back from joy & success, and release it once and for all. 

What does it feel like to fully trust? To surrender all your fears, doubts, excuses and just...be. This is a feeling that most of us will never know. This is because fear is our natural instinct, a tool for survival that we used to need in prehistoric times to ensure that we wouldn’t be killed or extinct. Although the world around us has evolved and the human race has since become the most advanced species, fear remains steady as one of our primal instincts and as a relentless defense mechanism.

WHAT DOES FEAR LOOK & FEEL LIKE?

Fear helps us avoid feeling painful feelings, making risky decisions and protects us from moving through challenging experiences. But sometimes these difficult and uncomfortable things are exactly what we need to go through in order to reach a place of joy, freedom and inner peace.

Realizing that fear will always be there is essential. It’s the devil on your shoulder feeding you lies and convincing you of all the reasons you can’t. This voice is powerful and sneaky. It disguises itself as logical thinking and it feels so much like truth, which makes it nearly impossible to tune out.

“I’m not ready”

“I’m too busy”

“I’m not talented enough”

“No one will care what I have to say”

“I could never do that”

“I don’t have enough money”

“My family and friends will judge me”

“Now’s not the right time”

And the list goes on…

The goal isn’t to avoid fear, but rather to choose not to believe it. The challenge lies in learning how to drown out this powerful fear-based voice with love and to do this we have to reprogram the way we are designed to react. We have to train our minds to lean toward love, and by practicing this often we can actually shift our natural instinct from operating out of fear to operating out of love and trust.

HOW FEAR CONVINCED ME TO STAY IN A JOB I HATED

For the past two years I have been teaching English in Madrid. And although deep down I am certain that I’m meant to be a teacher of some kind, I also know that being a teacher of English isn’t part of my real purpose. I went into this experience excited to learn and grow and connect with all different kinds of people and truly step into the role of ‘teacher.’ So for the past 2 years that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s been great. Really. 

But eventually I started to get the feeling that the lessons I was meant to learn in that space had already been learned and that it was time to move on. I was becoming exhausted by my schedule, unmotivated in the classroom, and could feel my vibes immediately lower upon entering work. Just the thought of going to work everyday made me feel like I was being suffocated.

I continued to wrestle with these feelings for many months.

“Why am I not as excited as I used to be?”

“Why do I hate getting up in the morning?”

“Why do I feel so negative and uninspired?”

I thought I was just in a funk, letting the little things about the management and schedule get to me too easily and that my energy and excitement for teaching would come back soon. But it didn’t. And it wore on me. I felt as though I was walking around with a permanent grey cloud over my head that could burst open at any minute and rain down all over my mood. If you’ve ever been in a job situation that made you dread going to work every day then you know how badly this can affect your energy, outlook, and ability to be positive.

I knew I had to leave. Once I was clear about this, I thought about it everyday. I envisioned the conversation with my boss, the feeling of teaching my last class, and the pure joy of knowing that I’d never have to wake up resenting my job and dreading the day ahead before it even began ever again.

Well…those tempting thoughts played on a loop in my mind for 6 months. Yep, 6 months of “clarity” yet I was unable to make any moves. Why? Fear.

FINDING THE COURAGE TO TELL FEAR TO FUCK OFF

Fear was like a close friend to me during this time. It comforted me in my moments of doubt by telling me things like, “You love your students!” (true) and, “Your coworkers are your friends and you’ll miss them.” (also true)

But most of the time it was more like a bossy BFF who can peer pressure you into anything and always convince you that she knows what’s best. It was times like these that fear told me,

“You won’t find another job.”

“You won’t be able to pay the bills.”

“Your family will judge you, you can’t just quit without a plan!”

“You just have a negative mindset, things will get better if you just stick it out.”

“You’re insane if you’re going to choose personal joy over a steady paycheck.”

This voice was so convincing and so hard to ignore that it took me 6 months to finally tune it out and come to terms with what my soul had been telling me I needed to do for a long time. I had this sort of breakdown/breakthrough in the shower one day when it hit me like a ton of bricks and I just knew that that day would be the day I quit.

I had downloaded an audiobook the day before called, “The Universe has your Back” by Gabrielle Bernstein and had just started listening to it. It was Monday morning and I was preparing for another dreaded workweek. I had felt uneasy all morning, my stomach was in knots, my neck and shoulders were tense and all the deep breathing in the world wasn’t helping me relax. So to get some positive vibes flowing I decided to hook up my bathroom speaker and listen some more while I showered.

I listened as Gabby talked about what it meant to receive an “assignment” from the Universe, like a lesson you’ve been called to learn. I thought about my constant mental battle with fear and how it was preventing me from leaving my job even though I felt a strong inner guide telling me that it was the right thing to do. With my eyes closed and the warm water running over my face I heard these words,

“Trust that if you weren’t ready to accept this Universal assignment you wouldn’t have pressed play on this book. By listening to this you unconsciously signed a sacred contract that says you’re ready to go BIG. You’re ready to heal and you’re ready to be FREE.”

I burst into tears. It was the final push I needed to knock the sense back into me and give me the courage to tell all my fearful thoughts to fuck off once and for all.

RELEASING FEAR & TRUSTING IN THE UNIVERSE

When I got out of the shower I sent my boyfriend a message saying that today was the day I was going to quit. His response was, “Good! Be strong. Call me when it’s done.”

All day I was waiting for the fear to creep back up and make me feel anxious or possibly even make me chicken out when it came time to meet with my boss. But it never came. I felt lighter, relieved, giddy almost at the choice I’d just made for my future happiness and well-being. For the first time ever I chose to fully trust in the Universe without a plan or any evidence of what to expect. As a type-A, overly organized, planner-aheader, worry-wart this was a serious accomplishment and it felt like I was on the right track to completing my Universal assignment.

WHERE IS FEAR HOLDING YOU BACK?

What’s your Universal assignment? Maybe there’s something you need to address at work, at home, in your friendships, relationships, or even deep within yourself. What’s holding you back? Maybe you have big goals and dreams but don’t believe they’re available to you because fear has wormed its way into your mind and convinced you that its voice is your own logical thoughts.

Finding the strength to recognize my fear for what it was, surrender it, and let go was one of the most freeing things I’ve ever experienced. I want to encourage you to examine your own life and figure out where fear is blocking you and how you can release it and start moving towards healing, freedom, and joy.