Building Courage and Confidence with compassion to overcome fear
I heard a quote recently by Codie Sanchez:
When It comes to Fear — choose your mountain wisely.
I've spent my adult life politely ignoring my fears, hoping they'd stay buried beneath the surface. But they have a way of creeping back, and with my anxiety, they become blurred.
When they finally appear, I either pretend they don't exist or misinterpret them as anger.
Sometimes it's because of fear that you want to climb that mountain only to decide you`re safer on the ground. Fear either pushes us forward or keeps us stuck.
Childhood fears
I remember as a young kid, I was always known as the child among my 3 siblings for my outbursts and anger issues.
When I wasn’t having outbursts I was shutting down, feeling overwhelmed a lot of the time by my loud ethnic family.
This caused me to sit on my own and barely utter a word, already disassociating from my emotions. Then I was told I was being too quiet.
This created a fear of being too scared to speak up, only to be dismissed or shut down. This resulted in pushing all my anger, my fears, and all of my emotions deep deep, deep down.
Fearing myself
I feared a lot growing up, I even feared myself.
Who I was, where I came from, and who I could be. The latter, of untapped potential, was drowned in the conditioning of fear. But overcoming fear? I don't think that ever stops.
The fear of making a mistake, living with that error, and its repercussions now, often leaves me in freeze mode. I was always trying to seek balance in myself and that inner turmoil of balance was a common occurrence.
It was very apparent how different my identity was. The threat to rocking the boat of the family dynamics. Not so much to me, as I spent a lot of my young adult life attempting to fit in and the rest of the time rebelling.
My spiritual awakening didn't occur until my early 30`s together with a bag of unique gifts and abilities only made me feel on the outside, always looking in. There was nothing conventional about my life or me. I didn't want the traditional.
This produced a new set of fears, how would my family perceive me? will they accept me, will they fear me because of who I am and the fear that I would be even more different than they thought possible?
I was and am uniquely different. Dancing my way through life, pushing every boundary looking for the real answers to my endless whys. I always had a knowing that something didn't feel right.
That knowing today, is at times, clouded in a haze of you must be mistaken, and you can't just know. But I did. It couldn't be explained, which made it more questionable by those around me.
Intuition being dismissed allowed doubt to constantly hang about me. I still fight with the lack of confidence across many areas of my life.
I have concluded and gained the awareness that facing my fears may never end. Unless I choose to end them, and that I can step out of fear at any time.
Owning my authority, power, and self-worth takes less energy than sitting in turmoil. Staying frozen unable to make a decision. It messes with your head, while the heart that sees and feels everything else together with the body nudges you to trust it.
Fighting with myself and surrendering
The universe will keep pushing me out of my shell every single day, and every day I will continue to dig my heels and only move when I am good and ready.
This dance will go on until one of us quits or stops fighting. As luck would have it I am also a fighter, I very rarely give up.
But, I do, on a very deep level understand what the universe is trying to do. And as I get older and tired of fighting, I am learning about surrendering.
My soul understands why I am here at this time and why it scares me so much to be in this body as a very very old and consciously awakened soul.
Knows the fears that I deal with, deep down how scared I get about moving forward even just one step at a time can keep me still. How I use fear as a shield in relationships - fear of anything or anyone that crosses my path or tries to get too close.
My life force, the energy within me, gives me the courage to keep facing these fears, one by one in my own time, in my own way.
But, one day I know that won't be able to happen, eventually I will get tired of staying on the edge or being locked in worry and anxiety. One day I will have no choice but to fly and see where I land.
The past fears
Sometimes we have to acknowledge our past and the conditioning we grew up with. We no longer attempting to carry it with us. Or using it to shield us from a future we don't even know how it will play out.
Just like healing, it is a journey. It's all the one steps that make up our path. It will take courage, strength, energy. Honouring of the soul, a sovereign being, and our divinity.
Living in or with fears also asks us to follow our heart, and trust that it has the highest good in its hands. Working with our hearts will be a big part of how we face our fears if we are ready to learn the lessons.
By looking deep into our souls, stretching them open just that little bit more. Allowing a tiny bit more light in will soothe the anxiety we may feel.
We replace fear with serenity. Learning to take moments not huge leaps. Decisions and choices that nurture our energy system, not ones that send our nervous system into overdrive.
Final Thoughts
I have learned and accepted that I tend to live life in extremes. However, it is gaining an awareness of these extremes.
Are they fuel for new adventures, choices, and decisions that help me expand? Or are they the opposite where they are the cause of ignoring emotions and leading to burnout?
Eventually, our fears can become our friends. Like someone who sits in the backseat telling you how to drive, acknowledging their opinions but driving however you like anyway.
We discern when our emotions are just emotions. Or when fear is trying to disguise them as something else. Such as doubts of the unknown. Knowing that ignoring them only leads to stagnation and nothingness.
The lesson is sitting with those emotions and not bypassing them, perhaps overcoming that fear is the time when everything aligns for the better.
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