Overcoming Your Fear & Taking the Challenge Head-On

Recently, one of my much valued Subscribers posted the following question at my website in response to my 'Ask Question' Panel that asked - What's your single biggest challenge or most important question about what's preventing you from creating a more SUCCESSFUL & HAPPY LIFE that you want & deserve?

My Subscriber's response question was - How can I ensure that I do not feel scared when taking on a new challenge?

In response, here are some thoughts & suggestions that I hope you will also find helpful -

Fear is one of the major things that blocks us & gets us stuck. It's natural to feel fear, we are all human. Our life quest is to conquer that fear, take the chances, move forward, & grow from the experience.

1. The first step or part of the answer is to peel away the layers & look at what's behind your fear - Ask yourself - What's behind my fear? What am I scared of? What do I think will happen? What do I worry about? What’s bothering me? Really listen to yourself & dig deep ...

Keep asking yourself - What is my underlying 'belief' about taking on new challenges? Where does that belief come from or originate from? What’s really holding me back? Why? Be really quiet & listen to what comes up from inside of you. Really listen to yourself, in perhaps a way that you’ve not allowed yourself to do before … Indulge yourself … You deserve it …

If you can pin-point it, define it, see it’s shape, look it straight in the eye, then you can know more exactly what you're dealing with & take the appropriate course of action to challenge it head-on.

Keep asking yourself – Is it rational? Is it a true fact? Does it serve my purpose or best interests? Does it get me what I want? What is the pay off for me in feeling/believing this way? Walk through the worse case scenario.

Focusing on fear, allowing it to paralyze you, blocks what is possible & could flow naturally - your true potential. When we resist our life, we resist the opportunity to learn & grow.

2. Our beliefs have been formed from our past experiences in childhood & our adult life so far. Perhaps things haven't worked out at points in time in the past when you took on a new challenge. Review what happened - What did you learn from those experiences? What would you do differently now?

3. Our thoughts create feelings & if you think them often enough they create a cellular remembrance. Think of it as a well-worn pathway - you create well-worn neural pathways in your brain of thoughts & beliefs that you hold as truth for you.

Well-worn pathways of thoughts like perhaps – ‘If I take on the challenge, I fear I'll fail, & then what?...’ Or ‘I fear that I'll succeed & then I don't know if I can handle the consequences, the pressure, the added responsibilities, other people's reactions etc ...’ Or ‘I fear I'm not good enough & won't make it, it’s too hard or difficult etc …’ or what ever is appropriate to your particular situation ...

When we keep thinking well-worn patterns of thought, we feel the ‘emotion’ – the 'emotional' reaction we had in the past & your body reacts as if the feared event is actually happening right NOW.

4. Also, the subconscious mind is programmed to maintain the ‘status quo’ - so whenever you start to rock the boat a little, & start thinking about or introducing change, your subconscious will go searching through your inner files for the unfavorable past experiences in an effort to derail you & keep you in your safer comfort zone. You may want the change in your conscious mind, but your subconscious is operating at another level.

5. That's why stilling the mind & truly 'being' in the moment is so important. We tend to spend so much of our time remembering past bad experiences & projecting them into our future, or spend our time on the 'what ifs', the ‘maybes’ & the ‘yes buts’ - & these are all being created by our mind.

6. Quantum physics & the law of attraction tell us that what you spend most of your time thinking about is what you get & attract into your experience. So, it’s important to shift thinking time onto the positive outcome as if it were happening here in the now & experience the 'feeling' & 'emotion' of it.

7. The answer is to stay focused on the moment & just do it, step-by-step, stay in the moment, & move forward. Walk into & through your fear & be proud that you took the steps. Congratulate yourself for having the courage to take it head-on & challenge it. When you move forward, you'll feel absolutely fabulous for doing so. Often, we find that the imagined fear we had around a certain 'thing' is nowhere near as bad as what we thought.

That’s why its so important to focus on the ‘positive’ scenario until we jump in & just do it & then actually live out & experience the positive scenario.

8. Another great thing to do to give greater clarity is to ask yourself when you’re facing a challenge – What would the consequences (positive & negative) be if I do this? What would the consequences be if I don’t do this?

9. Everything is 'choice'. At every moment we face choice & make a choice, whether good or bad, whether you move forward or not, you are exercising a choice, even if you don’t do anything, or back away, or put it on hold. It's a choice, a flick of a switch.

The fact that you posed this question reveals that you're wanting to improve your life, & you’re not content to just sit back & live your life on default or auto pilot, so that’s great. You may already be doing some of the above & sometimes its interesting to see something reinforced, or experience a new revelation.

Here's to Your Success & Being Your Magnificent Self ...

Best Wishes

Kathy Baker

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