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Posts tagged with “Fear”

How to Take Back Control from the Negative Script in Your Head

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“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman

I’d love to say I had an “Eat, Pray, Love” moment where sitting sobbing in the bathroom I received divine guidance to leave my husband and go traveling the world eating amazing food. But sadly, it wasn’t quite that profound.

It was more a long series of nights sobbing in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, and concluding “You’re broken.”

I wasn’t depressed and hadn’t been for a long time. My anxiety, a lifelong companion, was under control. …

How to Push Through Phases of Uncertainty

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“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I once trekked on my own along the Salkantay Trail …

How to Tackle Fear and Anxiety Cognitively, Behaviorally, and Spiritually

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“The beautiful thing about fear is that when you run to it, it runs away.” ~Robin Sharma

During my first-grade choir concert, my classmate, Meg, fainted from the top row of the bleachers, and in a subconscious gesture of empathy, I went down right after her, breaking my glasses and flailing on the gymnasium floor.

It’s possible that this triggered some kind of coping mechanism in my brain, because I started fainting again and again.

One time I fainted at the dentist’s office—immediately after the dentist injected me with my first round of Novocain—then months later in a hospital parking …

How to Keep Going When Doubts and Fears are Holding You Back

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“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

I don’t think there is anything more liberating.

At least nothing I’ve experienced at this point in my life.

I’m sure it’s happened to some of you. Probably more times than you can count.

The freedom I’m alluding to here is the moment when you do something that a part of your mind didn’t believe was possible.

Interestingly, the word ecstasy comes from the Greek ekastis, meaning “to step outside of oneself.”

And when …

How to Love Yourself into Speaking Up When You’re Frozen in Fear

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“Always speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.” ~Unknown

You may not want to admit this to others, but I know the truth about you.

You freeze, clam up, and shut down when tensions rise and your spidey-sense detects a hint of conflict in the air. You run for cover during the storm, and when it’s over, you judge yourself for not having delivered the perfect soliloquy in the heat of the moment to convey your point and get what you need and deserve.

And then you collapse into a hot mess of blame and shame.

I get it. …

How I Learned to Trust Others by Learning to Trust Myself

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“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.” ~Frank Crane

I’ve had trust issues for as long as I can remember, but didn’t realize it until after my divorce.

Divorce can be a traumatic experience, and in this case, it made me begin to take stock of my life. I began to reflect on my failed romantic relationships and why this was a repeat pattern for me.

I realized then that I never let people in for fear they will let me down, belittle or make me feel …

Yes, I Am Afraid to Fly, But I Won’t Let My Fear Control Me

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“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” ~Susan Jeffers

Let’s do a thought exercise together.

I have flown, I don’t know two or four times a year since I was eighteen and a few times before that, and I am now almost thirty-seven. On the low end that puts me around forty times. On the high ends that is, what seventy-five times in my life? Let’s split the difference and say I have flown fifty-five times because I have never kept track of things like that.

Also, I have jumped out of planes before. Yep, it was beautiful, and seriously …

How Failure Holds the Key to a Meaningful, Successful Life

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“Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots.” ~Julia Cameron

Within each of us lurks a perfectionist. And perfectionists set themselves up for a lot of pain in life.

How so? I’ll come to that.

First let me describe how our first child took her first step. She was less than ten months old. A very bright girl, who wanted nothing less than my approval at all times.

On one occasion, a few months previous to that, she was crawling on the carpet and picked up some small thing. As she started to put it in her mouth, I called out loudly …

Don’t Let Your Fear Paralyze You

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It’s All About Perception: You Can Look Through the Lens of Love or Fear

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“We are not responsible for what our eyes are seeing. We are responsible for how we perceive what we are seeing.” ~Gabrielle Bernstein

One of the things I love about this journey of personal growth is that we get to learn the same lessons over and over again, until they finally sink in on a visceral level. I love it when I hear or read the same insights repeatedly, from various sources and at different stages along my own path.

Recently, at a low point in my life, I re-encountered this fundamental teaching in Gabrielle Bernstein’s book The Universe Has …

The Past May Have Shaped Us, But We Have the Power to Change

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“If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.” ~Toni Morrison

Our very first relationship is the one we develop with ourselves. However, even that one is shaped by outside forces.

You may or may not believe that we choose our family. Regardless of your position regarding how your soul made it to your parents’ household, the truth is that the environment we are born into determines a great deal of the rest of our lives. This is especially true about the way we relate with ourselves and others.

We learn by observing …

What’s Helped Me Get Out of My Head and Do Things That Scare Me

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“Don’t let the fear of what could happen make nothing happen.” ~Unknown

I knew it was coming.

But as I sat there on the first day of the seminar, my stomach still did a little turn when the trainer announced the exercise we’d be doing over our lunch break:

The dreaded pizza walk!

I knew this was the trainer’s wry (but equally as unnerving) riposte to Tony Robbins’ famous fire walks. But right then, I would have much rather taken my chances with the coals.

The idea is simple: Go into a shop, restaurant, or other public establishment and make …

4 Things I Needed to Accept When I Was in Transition and Felt Insecure

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“Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.”-  Robert Tew

I want you to picture this. You are standing on a mountain, and in front of you is a taller mountain with a prettier view. Between the mountains is 100,000 foot plunge to the bottom, filled with jagged rocks. You know that you need to make it to that other mountain and that the only way for you to do so is to jump—but for some reason, you cannot move.

This is what transition feels like, especially when you have to make …

3 Questions That Help Me Stop Worrying About Things I’ve Said and Done

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“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.” ~Dalai Lama

Another sleepless night had passed, with me worrying about whether I’d said the wrong thing to my colleague yesterday or if the tone of my email I’d sent was too critical.

They were not the only things that kept me awake.

I would go out to dinner with friends and say some ‘bad’ …

How Surfing Helped Me Turn Fear and Anxiety into Confidence

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“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~Dale Carnegie

Not too long ago I went through an extremely chaotic and emotional two-week period. Anything that could go wrong or be difficult did and was. I thought it would never end.

When it began, the little hiccups were easy to let roll off my shoulders. After about a week, I was feeling pretty worn down and was in tears daily. At the end, I felt numb, and when things kept going wrong I would say to myself “Sure… Okay …what’s …

Train Your Mind: Overcoming Negative Thoughts Is Half the Battle

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“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

I could not find the bottom of the pool.

The task seemed simple enough: Wearing no more than twenty pounds worth of gear, swim to the bottom of an eight-foot pool, remove your gear, and swim back up.

My feet combed for something—anything—solid beneath me, to no avail. A shock of fear struck through my veins, clouding my head. Panic. I reached a point of sheer, utter, uncontrollable panic.

Panic is an interesting beast. It is designed to trigger the flight-or-fight mechanism in the human body; it is for survival …

Facing the Fear of Change: Big Risks Can Bring Big Rewards

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“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ~Barack Obama

If someone said to you, “Hey, you know how you are feeling the need for change and you’re not sure what to do? Well, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can guarantee that if you follow where your heart leads you, you’ll create the possibility of more joy than you’ve ever felt before. All you have to do is walk through …

How I Turned Fear and Anxiety into Joy and Fulfillment

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“The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.” ~Alain de Botton

I know fear and anxiety. We’re old friends. When I was fifteen, and school was over, I’d have to force one foot in front of the other. It was time to go home. I always kept going, and with every step I’d psych myself up.

You see, once I’d gotten home, fixed my dinner, and finished my homework, my mother would come home. It was then that we would begin the nightly ritual of me talking …

What My Self-Judgment Was Trying to Tell Me

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“Regret is a fair but tough teacher.” ~Brene Brown

A few weeks back, I found myself in the midst of a shame hangover and, like most people, when I’m in that unique internal cavern, self-judgments swoop into my consciousness like a colony of rabid bats in a four-foot tent.

I’ll paint the picture…

There are about two or three boys that have started visiting the houses on my block recently. They hold a rag and a windex bottle, come into every yard, knock on the door, and ask to wash the front doors (most of which are glass). Seems pretty …

Learning How to Confront Someone When You’re a People-Pleaser

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“The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge.” ~Marianne Williamson

I have always been a people-pleaser, a trait that on the surface seems positive. Like many of us, I want people to like me, and I do my best to make them feel loved. But when someone is angry with me or feels I’ve hurt them in some way, no matter how insignificant or fleeting that anger or pain is, it crushes me.

Over the years, I learned to value other people’s happiness and …