“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron
I awoke with a jolt. I heard the steady breathing of my sleeping partner next to me. I checked the clock; it was 3:30 AM. With a deep exhale, while rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I reached out to my bedside table to grab my phone.
For a moment, I hesitated. I knew that tickets went on sale at 4:00 AM New Zealand Time and that they would be going fast.
The U.S. event I wanted to attend would require a considerable financial investment (air travel and accommodation in addition to the costly ticket) and, given my track record, I was worried that I’d be wasting my money, once again.
I looked back at my history of getting really excited about something, only to lose steam halfway through and find all sorts of excuses why it was impossible to continue. How could I be sure this wouldn’t happen again?
Could I trust this time that fear would not take over and destroy my best intentions?
I knew that I wasn’t just buying a ticket to an event. From the moment I heard about the conference, I was certain of one thing: I had to be there because I wanted to get up on stage and talk, even though I never thought that I’d have ambitions to be in the public eye, to disrupt the comfort of my calculable days, or to allow those really grand dreams into my consciousness.
Instantly, after recognizing that I couldn’t shake the desire to talk in front of hundreds of people—in public and in a foreign country—I heard the familiar naysaying voices. Faint at first, they whispered that I should go back to sleep and not waste my money.
Together, they wondered what excuse I could tell my friend, whom I had promised that I’d be at the event this year. What would be the most plausible reason why I couldn’t go?
It was undeniable; fear was here. Reliable like the clock that was ticking in my bedroom, fear had crept up to me out of the darkness.
Now, holding me fully in its grip, it spoke with a booming voice while breathing ice-cold air down my neck.
“Put your phone away and go back to sleep. Don’t be so stupid,” it hissed. “Money doesn’t grow on trees, don’t waste it on this little fantasy of yours. You’re never going to board that plane anyway, I can tell you now.”
Fear is one of the most excruciating and potentially destructive encounters we have to face. It is the enemy that attacks us from within.
While reliable enough for us to know that it will show up, we can never be sure when we will have to brace ourselves. As I was lying in bed at 3:30 AM, phone at the ready with the intention to take the next crucial step towards realizing a long-held dream, fear showed up.
Its presence usually triggers the following events for me: my heart starts to beat faster, my breathing accelerates, and my body temperature rapidly fluctuates between hot and cold, all while I spiral downward into a mental and emotional abyss, resulting in the total collapse of the dreamer within who triggered it all in the first place.
Fear puts me in survival mode and pushes aside everything else that has a whimsical, magical, and expansive quality to it.
I know this sequence so well. Many of us do. So that night, tired of being tossed around by fear-induced tidal waves, I hatched my own four-step process for dealing with fear and transforming it into positive action.
1. Ask yourself if it’s a real or perceived threat.
Undeniably, fear is a powerful emotion. And it’s useful too. I want fear by my side, heightening my senses and alerting me to potential dangers when a loud noise wakes me up at night.
But I realized that fear is not as clever or cunning as it may seem. It cannot differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat. Differentiating those nuances is not its job, really; it has no time to categorize. Once there is any kind of threat on the horizon, it kick starts the survival program to keep me safe from harm.
My job is to recognize that fear is here and has begun to lock me into survival mode. Once I brought full awareness to the fact that I was scared, I was able to look at the trigger. It occurred to me to ask if what I’m fearful of is actually a real threat or a perceived threat.
Real threats are usually quite obvious. They are potentially very dangerous and more often than not involve physical harm. For example, I would not think twice about protecting myself from someone trying to climb through my bedroom window at night.
Perceived threats, on the other hand, are usually mental images such as memories or ideas. They are based on past experiences or on future predictions; they are walls we erect to protect the delicate structures of the world as we know it.
Perceived threats are mere illusions that hold us back from pushing our boundaries and exploring new shores. So perceived threats are, in reality, opportunities for immense personal growth.
Unless we live in an unstable region, I would argue that 90 percent of the time we experience fear, it is a perceived threat. What insight! Once I realized that I wasn’t dealing with a life-threatening situation, I steadied myself with a calming breathing exercise.
2. Use fear’s energy as a lever to breakthrough.
A little calmer, I saw that fear set free an incredible amount of energy. My heart was still beating at one hundred miles an hour. What to do with it?
Busting through those sturdy walls I erected in the past takes a certain oomph. I realized that I can redirect the energy let loose by fear and rattle those walls until they crumble.
Suddenly, fear became not so much an emotion to give in to blindly, but an invitation to actively participate, to identify where its energy was needed most and to use the powerful physical and emotional tidal wave to wash away those outdated, internal boundaries.
3. Go deep.
I scrubbed. I mean, I really scrubbed! I looked in every nook and cranny of my being, brushed away the cobwebs, and shone a light into those dark corners where I don’t usually like to look.
I wanted this personal growth. So, like old and weak leaves from trees in stormy weather, my own limiting beliefs were removed from my mental catalog and dissolved.
How do we do this? We take every fear-induced mental image and transform it from a negative to a positive experience.
I saw myself boarding the plane instead of watching myself construct plausible excuses for why I couldn’t go. I pictured myself at the conference, on stage, talking in front of hundreds of people that loved every word I said instead of seeing myself sitting at home in Auckland on the weekend of the conference.
4. Take action.
I checked my phone; the ticket sale had started. “This is it,” I thought. “Go for it.”
After the intense standoff with my own fear, I decided to be gentle with myself. With a deep exhale, I closed my eyes and anchored those positive mental images in every cell of my being until I was ready to take the next courageous step towards realizing my dream.
And with reassuring peace and newfound freedom in my heart, I purchased.
What fear is holding you back? Is the danger real or perceived? Can you see a mental image of your dream coming to life? And how can you channel the energy of your fear to take action toward your dream?
About Katalin Csengo
Katalin Csengo is a Word Connoisseur, Idea Catalyst and Possibilities Explorer based in Auckland, New Zealand. Liked this article? Let her know by visiting her website and making her traffic spike! 🙂 Other places you can connect with Katalin are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.