Episode 93 - Fear is the Problem
Episode 93 - Fear is the Problem
Hello, my friends!
Welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you are here. We have officially survived the first week of January. How is everyone doing?
I hope you are doing good and I hope you are allowing yourself to move into the new year at your own pace. If you like to set goals and resolutions, awesome. If you don’t, awesome.
Last week on the podcast, I talked about The Pause Principle. If you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, I invite you to do so. Part of this principle is learning what to say “no” to in your life and what to say “yes” to in your life in order to live your life in a way that lines up with your personal values. If we never take the time to pause and consider what we value and then choose our life on purpose, we end up living a life on default which I believe is really no way to live.
You are interested in working with me this year to become a creator of your life, I would love to be your coach. Just visit my website https://www.seasons-coaching.com/work-with-me to learn more about my 1:1 Season of Creation coaching program.
Now on to this week’s episode.
When I first found out about life coaching, I remember hearing the phrase, “all problems are thought problems.” I also believe we can take that a little further and say that all problems are fear problems.
There is a book called The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. It is a fascinating read. The author talks about how every creature on earth has this ability to predict danger–and get out of its way. As humans, our brain is designed to keep us safe. We each have a basic survival skill or intuition within to help us to stay safe. However, as humans in the modern world, we also struggle with a lot of unwarranted fear. This is what I want to speak about today.
Life coach and author, Kim Giles, teaches in her book, Choosing Clarity, that the two core fears we each face in our lives are:
Fear of Failure - the fear that we aren’t enough.
Fear of Loss - the fear that our life isn’t enough.
Think about the last time you did something that made you feel stupid or embarrassed. Did your face turn red? Do you remember how you felt? Do you know what these experiences feel so painful?
It is because it triggers the core fear of not being enough. I think as women we all struggle with feeling like we are not enough. We aren’t smart enough. We aren’t thin or fit enough. We aren’t organized enough. We aren’t spiritual enough. We aren’t articulate enough. We aren't funny enough. We aren’t driven enough. We aren’t social enough. Comparison comes easy to us, and it can seem like we are failing at everything or falling short in some way. No matter how hard we try at one thing, we fall short at another thing which reinforces our belief that we aren’t enough and then the fear continues to be there and even can grow stronger.
As children, we learned, in many different ways, that we needed to be different than we were. Who we were wasn’t good enough. We needed to change in some way. We heard things like Don’t do that! You need to sit still. Be good. Settle down. Be quiet. Speak up. You need to be outgoing. You should be less outgoing. You get the idea. Now, I am not saying that our parents did anything wrong. They were doing their best. Just like we did the best we could. But there can be this subtle message that we carry with us that we need to be different in some way.
As we got older, the fear may have grown into a fear of failure, a fear of looking bad, and a fear of judgment. Then as we became adults, it became a fear of being rejected or abandoned or unworthy of love. Every time we felt something like shame, disappointment, or hurt, the fear grew bigger and clouded our vision of who we really are. I have heard it referred to as the adaptive child. We learned how to adapt over time to protect ourselves which overshadowed our feelings of love.
Fear of failure can show up in a lot of different ways and can cause problems in your life. This fear is negatively affecting how you show up in your life. Take a minute and think about what your fear of not being enough is costing you. How has it blocked you from living a life you love? Is it affecting your ability to feel joy? Is it keeping you from connecting with the people around you? Is it keeping you from trying new things? Are you always worried about what other people think about you?
When we live in the fear of not being enough, it negatively affects us.
The second core fear is the fear of loss. We experience this fear on a regular basis when we believe our life isn’t good enough. We are fearing that we will lose our sense of security or control. We fear losing our reputation, respect, loved ones, money, time, opportunities, or validation from others.
Take a minute to think about how this fear affects your daily life? How often do you worry that you will be taken advantage of, mistreated, or you won’t get what you need or deserve? How often do you believe life isn’t fair? How do you show up in your life when you feel this fear? How do you treat other people when you feel this fear?
When we feel like our life isn’t enough, it feeds controlling and manipulating behaviors. We get offended easily, overly emotional, or highly reactive. Fear of loss can cause problems in all areas of our life.
Understanding these two core fears (fear of failure and fear of loss) and how they show up for us in our life is very important. It helps us gain greater awareness around why we do what we do all in an effort to quiet these two fears.
Sometimes, we even do good things in an effort to quiet these fears. We may fall into the people-pleasing trap or the self-sacrificing mentality because we are seeking validation or approval from others.
Which of these two fears do you see is the bigger issue for you–the fear of loss or fear of failure? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of failing, being rejected, or looking bad? Or are you more afraid of being taken advantage of, losing things, or missing out on something?
Once we understand fear is causing many of our problems, we have the power to change it. Awareness is the first step.
I am going to share with you some fear-based or what I call false beliefs that may be causing you problems in your life. These false beliefs are keeping you from living your beautiful life.
Fear keeps us focused on ourselves. We can’t show up for others when we are worried about getting the love, attention, fair treatment, or validation we think we need from others.
It can seem safer to stay in fear. We believe that it is harmless and we are staying there all in an effort to protect ourselves, but it keeps us from thriving—from living how we’re meant to live. And that’s no way to live.
Fear keeps us in a place of lack and scarcity. It may cause us to be jealous of others. Again, we are needing the validation of others to feel like we are enough or that our life is enough.
Fear makes us feel like everything is about us. We take things personally. We believe that the things people say or do in some way are a reflection of our value and worth.
Fear leads us to believe that value is hierarchical–that one person’s value and worth can be greater than another person’s. That we must earn our worth by what we do or achieve.
Fear tells us that we have to be perfect. It is that critic that lives inside our head that judges everything we do or say and everything that other people do or say. This critic tells us that if we aren’t perfect then we aren’t good enough. This lie of perfection then keeps us believing that we will never be good enough.
Fear creates the idea that there are winners and losers in life. If someone else wins therefore we lose. This feeds comparison, judgment and the need to be better than other people to be of value.
Fear causes us to focus on the differences in others. We see these differences as being better or worse than us. People we don’t understand are bad and those we do understand are good.
Fear feeds into most every negative emotion. Kim Giles says it this way: – Fear is behind anger, jealousy, guilt, suspicion, rejection, hurt, and pessimism. It is the cause of depression, discouragement, and frustration. It is a place of ego, pride, defensiveness, anxiety, concern, protecting, getting, gaining, and proving your value. It is behind judgment, criticism, [contention], and every other negative state you can experience.”
Fear skews what we see as appearing real and is usually not accurate. We are confusing facts with our fears.
When we live life from a place of fear, we can’t be who we really are meant to be. This causes us to forget love and prevents us from really connecting with ourselves, others and even God.
We are avoiding believing something that may cause us to feel a negative emotion if things don’t work out. But we are just creating negative emotion ahead of time.
We are avoiding doing things that may not work out the way we want which would also cause us to feel a negative emotion.
We hold ourselves back because we don’t want to feel what we’re going to feel when failure or loss happens.
Here’s what’s interesting about that: When you don’t meet your expectations, the only feeling you’re going to end up having is based on what you decide to think. You set out to do something, you have an expectation of the result, and you miss that expectation. This isn’t good or bad. It just is.
At that point, you get to decide what you’re going to make that mean. You get to decide what you’re going to think about that. If you think about that in a way that hurts your feelings—if you think about that in a way that’s disappointing—then you’re going to experience that negative emotion.
But the truth is, things happen and then we decide to make it mean something that hurts. We decide to make it mean something that causes us a negative emotion.
When I was struggling with the choices of my adult children, I was making their choices mean something about me. I was making it mean that I was a terrible mother. If I had done things differently, it wouldn’t be this way. I was believing that the frustration I was feeling was just happening to me and that it was my kids fault. If they would change, then I would feel better. I was trying to control the uncontrollable because I was afraid. I was creating my own experience and the quality of my relationships with my adult children because of what I was believing about them and their choices.
When circumstances happen, we can decide to make that mean the end of the world, or we can decide to make that mean something that feels better.
I want to be clear here. Did I want to be happy about certain choices? No.
But, instead of believing that everything has gone wrong with my adult children and focusing on all the things that I think they are doing wrong, I changed my perspective. Instead of resisting who they are and what they are choosing, I am accepting that they are on their own journey and my job is to love them, not to save them. They have a Savior for that.
My children are here on earth for the same reason as I am–to learn and grow by experience. The earthly experience was divinely designed in a way for our best good which includes opposition in ALL things. Not a few things. ALL things. We are all beloved children of loving heavenly parents who are aware of us. They created a plan of redemption for all of their children. I can have hope in Christ that He will do what He said He would do. The trials and struggles in our life are the very things that can help us see the Savior for who He is. Each of us are on our own journey to come and know Him in our own personal way, whatever that looks like. The only thing that I really have control of is the person I want to be. I want to be the person who shows up in love. That doesn’t mean that I don’t create healthy boundaries but I never set them from a place of fear, anger or resentment. It is always from a place of love for everyone in the story which includes me.
I continue to practice beliefs that feel better. I refuse to beat myself up when I miss the mark of who I want to be. I pick myself up and learn from the experience. I truly believe that everything is figure-out-able and that we are here on earth to experience joy. Sometimes, I am going to feel fear. But when I do, I slow down and ask myself if it is a real, useful fear that is going to protect me from physical harm or is it a false fear that I am creating for myself from a false belief. If it is a false fear, I remind myself that it can't hurt me and I don’t have to be afraid because it is only a perception of danger.
By learning to face your false fears, you can begin showing up in your relationships as who you want to be. You can begin thriving in your own life. You can begin living in abundance and providing your own validation. You can begin recognizing the awe and wonder in yourself and in others knowing we are all 100% worthy and valuable in the sight of God. You can begin letting go of perfectionism, judgment, comparison, and begin embracing all of you with compassion. You can begin seeing things as they really are. You can begin living in your true identity as a divine child of Heavenly Parents who love you.
I invite you to consider at least one false belief or false fear that you can set down and leave behind so you can begin creating a life you want to live and becoming the person you want to become.
That is all I have for you today. Have a joyful week!
Mentioned on the podcast:
The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
Seasons of Joy Podcast Episode #92 - The Power of the Pause
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