Fear No More

You ever look back at a situation after you stepped into it and it turns out way better than you could ever imagine? The courage to take that big leap is always scarier than the jump itself. One of the main driving emotions that often keeps us stuck in complacency and in our comfort zones is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear that the place you’re at in life is as good as it’s going to get. Fear of failure. Fear of not being enough. Fear of being alone. Fear of stepping into higher positions because you don’t think you’re worthy or capable enough. Or what ever else that may seep into your mind that causes you to stop in your tracks hindering you from taking that big leap. It can be hard to keep a sound mind especially now a days with social media, the news, everything going on in the world, and even the people surrounding you screaming fear into your life. 

The human mind is so beautifully complexed, yet it can be one of our biggest battles if we don’t take control of our thoughts. Our thoughts create and manifest our personal realties. What you speak and how you think truly does come into fruition. Thoughts become our beliefs and our beliefs then in turn bloom into our actions. I personally let fear have way to much of a strong hold on my life. It hindered me from accessing so many parts of my self and put limitations on the possibilities that my life could achieve. Fear is a survival emotion. It keeps us out of danger and alerts us when something is wrong. However when your whole life has been stuck in survival mode that normal amount of fear that supposed to protect you slowly turns and creates a spirit of fear. Causing a gut wrenching feeling that stops you from taking that leap of faith you’ve been wanting to take every time you set out to elevate and change your life. Or the intense overwhelming feeling that wakes you up at 3 in the morning in disarray making you rack your mind about all the problems and worries your brain insist you problem solve and get all the answers to right then and there. It can create a constant unnecessary worry of the future and reliving the past. Having a spirt of fear is often developed through a life thats been saturated with chaos and trauma. 

I was stuck there for a while. The biggest mistake I made was claiming it as my own. When you claim for example fear, anxiety, insecurity, depression, lust, addiction, anger or any other thing you may struggle with or you attach yourself to, it opens a door that manifests more to come in. Creating a reality that continues to attracts those exact things you wish to break free from. My life began changing the moment I started to learn how shift my mindset and realize the true power I hold over my thoughts and mind. The first step is becoming self aware of your thoughts and actions. The moment self awareness expands you create a space for healing and growing. Healing isn’t linear and the more you heal the deeper you dig into the layers of yourself that need some TLC as long as you allow yourself to be aware of those areas. 

We all have a thorn. That one thing that we’ve struggled with for most of our life allowing it to have free range in how it can control us. Claiming it as our own identity because it’s familiar and has always been there. But the truth is there’s a reason that thorn made its way in your side in the first place. A lot of times its deeply rooted in emotional wounds we experienced in our childhood and adolescence years. To break free from the thorn it takes healing of those deep emotional wounds. Letting them go. I had to learn to let go. I was so tired of living in fear. I was so tired of being chained by anxiety. It was a living hell to battle my mind every day. I began to gain understanding through reading and seeking therapy that these negative thoughts and patterns that I dealt with weren’t mine to hold onto in the first place. They were all survival mechanisms from my past that my subconscious was clinging onto. Being in survival mode each thought and each action was in full time defense. It was like I was always in preparation to either fight or flight. It was a pattern that I developed to protect myself at one point in my life but it wasn’t serving me anymore in my adult life. Our minds are very habitual and seek out patterns. We think roughly 80% of the same thoughts we had yesterday. Meaning every day can feel like it kind of repeats the previous day. Which in turn can create a life thats cyclical in nature if there’s no mindfulness and filter to the thoughts that we allow to run our day to day lives. It takes awareness and attunement to change those thought patterns to create new, growing and loving ones. Change is not found in the comfort zone. To create new there will be uncomfortability but it’s the only way to grow. 

I remember signing my travel contract and getting ready to move to Missouri alone. I was stepping out of all things comfortable. I remember racking my brain allowing fear to swallow me. Thinking of all the things that could go bad while I was here. Like, “I’m going to be there all alone and if I get kid napped or attacked or die some how, no one that knows me would even know what happened to me”. Or “I’m never going to meet anyone or be able to enjoy my time in this new city because I’m all alone and have no one to experience it with”. Just putting my focus on the worst case scenario. Most of the fears we attach ourselves too are irrational. Things that will never happen to begin with. So I had to start asking myself why am I allowing these thoughts that aren’t serving me? But stripping me of enjoying the moments and endless possibilities right in front of me take up so much space in my mind? What if this move was about to be the biggest blessing that could have been placed on my life? What if I was going to meet the exact people I was supposed to meet on my journey of finding my tribe? What if I was going to be placed in rooms that I was meant to be placed in that move me to new heights? What if this next season of being alone is a season thats more abundant than I could imagine? A single shift in thought. A perspective change. Where the seeds are planted the flowers will blossom. I had to start planting seeds in different thoughts. I had to let go of the fear that kept me rooted in anxiety blinding me from the blessings God was trying to work in my life. Often times we get so caught up in the change or what we are loosing we miss out on the chance God is giving us to move differently. We loose sight of the new doors he’s going to open after we let go of the old keys we keep trying to use to open the new. 

I knew that to dig deeper and pull out those last few thorns that I had rooted deep I had to become uncomfortable to grow. So I pushed my self right into the uncomfortable. Into the unknown. Into the place that made my skin crawl and made me nauseous just thinking about it. I made the most conscious decision to grow, heal, learn to really love myself and use the time I had being 900 miles from anything comfortable to do just that. Reading all the self help books I could get my hands on. Spending every waking minute in meditation with God. Putting myself out there to meet new people. Placing my self in rooms and opportunities that will only rise me to new heights. Letting go of the past and stepping into the new. The beginning was hard. I spent many hours crying and consumed by the overwhelming fear and anxiety that I felt. Letting go of your old self and old ways of thinking doesn’t happen over night. Real change takes discipline, obedience, and repetition. It took a lot practice of redirecting my thoughts, mindfulness, shifting perspective, grace, faith, and God placing the right people and placing me in the right places to pull those deeply rooted thorns out of my side. There are some days I still feel the lingering affects of the thorn that was once there. But each day is a new day to step into the feeling of no thorn in my side. Getting used to moving with out it, not having to think about it, not claiming it as my own, just being free. Freedom is on the other side of true healing. Freedom is on the other side of fear. Walk into your season.