“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” Japanese Proverb

With Halloween around the corner, it’s the perfect time to talk about fear. My favorite acronym for F.E.A.R. is “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Rarely are we actually having the true physiological experience of fear unless it’s in response to some kind of external stimulus that is creating the feeling in real time (like being chased by a tiger). Fear is a valuable emotion because it gives us a warning sign to stimulate our fight or flight response when we are in danger. But most fear is totally in our head – meaning it is psychological rather than physiological. Basically, fear comes from a “what if” type of thought with a negative outcome attached to it. Experiencing less fear requires two things: changing our thoughts in response to the what if’s that scare us, and doing things that scare us to prove to ourselves that we can totally take on fear!

My Halloween invitation to you is to overcome a fear by doing something that scares you. And before I thought of asking you to do this, I want you to know that I’ve done it myself. You’ll see in my video this week that I recorded my message to you outside in public along the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Usually I like to record my vlogs alone in my house or a hotel room if I’m on the road, where no one is watching and I can control the environment. Setting up my camera to vlog with people watching and the noise of traffic around me, which required me to talk louder and draw even more attention to myself, seemed totally scary before I actually did it! But I thought if I was going to ask you to take on a fear, I’d better practice what I preach.
Here is a step-by-step process you can use to take on fear:

1.    Think of something that really scares you. After you think of it, observe what kind of negative thoughts and stories you are creating around it. Notice how much negative future fantasizing you are doing and how that creates the feeling of fear in your body. Pay attention to how it stops you and also notice that you are being stopped by your thoughts, not reality (aka FalseEvidenceAppearingReal).
2.    Now ask yourself, “What would be different if I wasn’t scared of xyz?” Notice that as you begin to think about how things would be if you weren’t scared, you start to create different pictures in your head. The more you imagine how things would be different and more doable if fear wasn’t in your way, the more you’ll start to see possibility and positivity rather than problems and negative outcomes.
3.    Take action! Now it’s time to use the momentum you have gained from shifting your thoughts to how things would be different if you were not scared. Do at least one thing that you have labeled as scary in the past and prove to yourself that you can do it. Remember, the gap between the feeling of fear and excitement is very small, so uplevel your psychological state from one of hesitation to one of HECK YEAH, I CAN DO THIS!

The really cool thing about doing something that scares you is that it is rarely ever as bad as how you envisioned it when you were allowing your fear take the lead. But in order to experience this cool awareness, you gotta just do it.

So this Halloween, instead of going for a sugar rush from too much candy, give yourself a healthier and longer lasting rush by getting out of your comfort zone. Don’t be a scaredy cat; it’s not who you really are. Take on something that scares you and prove to yourself how courageous you really are!!!

Boo!
Christine

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Dale Carnegie

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Marcus Aureliu