Living Life Without Fear

Fear can be a powerful influence in your life, often determining the actions you take or don’t take in many situations. At various times fear has probably stopped you from pursuing goals, making new friends, starting or keeping a romantic relationship, applying for a better job, starting your own business, or life changes that you would consider to be positive.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live your life without fear? Imagine if you had absolutely no fear of failure and you knew that you could accomplish anything you wanted, no limitations whatsoever. What would you do with your life? Imagine if you knew without a doubt that you deserved to have everything you want, and you had no doubts that you weren’t good enough or worthy enough. Imagine if you were no longer afraid to pursue your dreams and instead eagerly embraced opportunities to live every experience you wanted to live. What would you do if you could do anything at all? You may be thinking “It’s great to imagine all this but I still feel fearful much of the time. I’m still afraid to fail. I’m still afraid to be rejected. I’m still afraid to take a chance. How do I get past those scary feelings?”

First of all, forgive yourself for being human. It’s completely natural to have these feelings, and there is nothing wrong with you. Your body is wired to react strongly to potentially threatening situations. Your body cannot tell whether the threatening situation is truly harmful or not; it simply gives you the warning signs like a pounding heart, sweaty palms, shallow breathing, tightening muscles, and so forth. Fear can be pretty intimidating, no doubt. However, it’s important to understand that fear is just a feeling when it comes right down to it. It cannot physically hold you back from doing anything, and it cannot limit your potential unless you allow it to do so.

Overcoming the influence of fear so you can live an amazing life is a simple matter of knowing how to diffuse the fearful feelings in the heat of the moment. This can be done in a variety of ways, including the use of calming affirmations, meditation, and breath work. When you calm the thoughts that are triggering the fear response, your body will automatically calm down too. So many of us are ruled by fear. It’s one of the most damaging emotions that a person can have, and 99.9% of it is completely worthless.

I know that when I am able to do this, life is good. When I’m not able to do this, life isn't so great. And the greatness or not so greatness usually has very little to do with what’s going on around me.

Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. ~Ambrose Redmoon