How to Let Go of Fear

What would you try if you had no fear?

I posted this question on my Facebook wall the other day and here the answers I got back:
- write and publish an inspirational book
- pick up the phone and start calling prospects
- dating

Fear is an interesting topic I have been investigating for many years now. My original obsession of what makes people successful led me to study the effects of fear and the emotions on our physical body and the impacts of those emotions on the life we create for ourselves.

I understand all too well how fear can paralyze you and completely debilitate you. When I was 21 and living in Thailand in a little beach hut bungalow with no electricity, there was a famous diving and snorkeling beach across from “Shark Island”( named as such because they 5 had different kinds of sharks you could swim with in the wild right off the beach) just down the way from where I was living. For months I told myself I was going to go out there and swim with the sharks and face one of my all time biggest fears.

Finally a few days before leaving I got up my courage and convinced this chick from Norway who had never snorkeled in her life (!?!) to come with me and swim with the sharks. Of course I didn’t really tell here there would be sharks involved…

We got to the beach and people were coming out of the water waving their fins and masks, all excited, saying “I say 14 sharks just past the buoy” … now I was really curious and equally terrified!

The water that day was really rough and murky because the wind was high and stirring up the bottom of the ocean so my new Swede friend decided to stay back in neck high water while I was determined NOT to let FEAR get the best of me, so I swam out my myself.

Insane…slightly.

Swimming out a little ways the water got deeper and darker but cleared out until you could see the light streaming in. On the very bottom of the ocean swimming straight towards me, but below me, was a shark, a shark as big as me!

Now I am quite a tall drink of water people tell at 6”2 inches, so this was THE BIGGEST fish I had ever seen! To make matters worse, it swam up from the bottom of the ocean towards me a couple of feet like it was coming up to eat me. Panic set in as I realized I was alone, and in the ocean and here is this shark coming up to freaking eat me! My life flashed before eyes and all I could see were the headlines in the newspapers, “ Canadian chick gets eaten by sharks swimming out in the ocean alone” oh crap…

Right away I used my mantra no fear, no fear, no fear….I repeated it over and over again and the shark simply swam right underneath me without much of an interest and disappeared into the murkiness of the shoreline. I whipped around to make sure there weren’t any other big fish lurking then high tailed it back to shore as fast as my little fins could carry me feeling very proud of myself.

I had faced my second biggest fear (leaving to live in a foreign country where I didn’t know anyone or speak the language being #1) my entire trip out to Asia alone at 20 yrs old was about this – having NO FEAR.

Departures from the Ordinary

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela

Fear, I realized, is all an illusion we all create in our minds that can SEEM very real at the time, it can seem so real actually that it can paralyze you. But fear is JUST an emotion – a thought conjured up by the ego to protect you.

The ego will use fear as a very sneaky way to protect you from harm. Starting out trying something new like writing a book where if you succeed maybe people won’t like it, maybe it will get bad reviews, maybe you’ll start writing it and never finish it because you don’t have what it takes…on and on it goes.

The mind begins picking up steam and racing with these thoughts of self-doubt that are run by fear.
That’s what the ego does…it tries to protect you through fear.

Don’t pick up the phone and call those prospects it warns, no one wants to be bothered by you today, no one wants what you have to offer… all of these are all just thoughts.

Quite a brilliant strategy but it will never work, not for long anyways because your spirit is pure love, and love is the absence of fear. You cannot love and fear at the same time. Impossible. It’s impossible.

This is the first key to finding your way out of fear.
The ego tries to separate you from this all loving energy that you are, your spirit. You are already safe, and secure it is your ego that would try and have you believe otherwise, that tries and succeeds often times by pulling you out of harmony with thoughts of the future, trying to figure things out, worry, and warnings.

But it’s all an illusion and eventually all illusions fade because the truth cannot hide.

3 Keys to Taming the Ego and Letting Go of Fear Once and For All

Taming your ego is not an easy job; it’s so enmeshed in running the show that you don’t even realize it’s in control. You can take your power back and begin to relax in the knowing and trusting of beingess, of being in the flow by following these 3 simple steps.

1- Become Aware of How You Feel in Your Body

Fear creates a tense, shutting down, closing off feeling. Notice how you feel in your body when you are loving, when you are carefree, when you are relaxed and DECIDE to question your mind anytime you feel off. Decide you will put how you feel as a priority. Try it out as a test.

Decide that how you feel is more important than anything today more important that getting the chores done, going to work, or finishing your tasks – put your feeling as a top priority because how you feel vibrates out your reality. If you’re out of control with how you feel you’re out of control with everything. Your mind is a creative instrument and if you holding mind fear – guess what you are creating…hmmm mmm more fear. So decide to become aware of how you feel in each moment.

With all of the mental stimulus available now days everyone is on computers we get disconnected from our bodies. You might even sign up for some kind of class that helps you practice being in your body like yoga, dance, or tai chi.

2- Notice What Your Self Talk is Saying

This is a tricky practice to watch your thoughts without getting caught up in them. Notice if your self- talk is trying to protect you from something it’s usually always some experience from the past where you got hurt, and the ego is trying to help you avoid experiencing the same pain again.

We create decisions long ago and unless we revisit them again and make new decisions those previous decisions run our lives – they become the filters with which we create from.

Your decision could have been it’s dangerous to be vulnerable, perhaps your feelings ignored as a small child and now you hold yourself away from any real and authentic connection with others because of this filter/decision that’ still playing in the background. Or maybe you were mocked as a child and made the decision that being visible is simply not safe and so now as an adult no matter how many goals you make putting your work out in a big way terrifies you.

3- Send your little voice, that annoying self talk some love and compassion – That’s all it wants.

I know it sounds a little weird – but everything can be overcome with love. Your inner child the one who made these decisions long ago to NOT suffer from xyz experience EVER again is simply trying to protect you. If you send it love, the fear will lose it’s grip, the emotion will subside and you’ll be able to make a sound decision without all of the fear tied to it.

Simply saying to yourself quietly when you notice fear creeping up “I love you” until it dissolves will make a HUGE shift in your energy.

Letting go of fear means moving into living our lives more from TRUST and FLOW. In the center of your being you cannot be anything other than that because love is your true nature. It will never go away, it will never leave you and you can never use it all up. Love will wait patiently while your ego drives you in circles of self-doubt, loathing and separation and it will wait there with open arms until the day you return to it’s all encompassing knowingness. It is not for some people – the move away from ego and fear and back to love is the path we are ALL here to experience. You decide how quickly or slowly you’d like to remember and re-experience peace and ease and flow. It’s just a decision and you can chose to make that decision right now.

What will you decide?

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To Your Love, Expansion and Freedom

Vanessa