The Great Fear of Your Life is the one that’s been operating alongside you all these years. It’s been a constant presence, like a shadow that follows you. Despite its title, it hasn’t been a big or bombastic fear, it hasn’t been a crashing cymbal or a lightning strike. Instead it’s been the small force that repeatedly nudges you away from the many small decisions and actions that might improve your life or unleash you to go for what you want.
Make it your mission to find your Great Fear, face it, and remove it. Or, learn to make it your ally in discovering what it means to get past letting it block being the powerful, productive human being you are. Either way, do not let it stop you any further. The barrier it presents is false - it is a false image of what might happen or what you might not be able to handle, that is keeping you back in many subtle ways that add up to one large way: not getting to where you want to go. Not having the high performance you could. Not tackling the challenges and difficult situations that could take you to the next level. Not being LIMITLESS.
Find the Fear
(1) What is your fear? This is an exercise best done in private, or with a deeply supportive friend or partner who is a trusted sounding-board. Look back over the story arc of your life and career. Identify the fear that repeatedly dogs you - that has dogged you your whole life. What is the greatest fear of your life that’s come around again and again, that’s STILL operating in your life today? The one that nudges you away from the things that might make your life great? The one that makes you say, "No, uh, not me, not now, maybe later, maybe never" to opportunities? How about any of these...
Being judged if you're authentically you?
Being cast out if you act on your ambitions?
Being shamed and ridiculed for all that you really are?
The false belief that you'd have to go it alone as the price to pay for following your vision?
Fear that trying to make positive change will cause you to lose your financial, job, relationship, or other security?
That in trying, you'll embarrass yourself so badly “no one will ever forget it”?
That in learning, your failures will be so drastic and so public (or at least feel that way) that “no one will ever forgive them”?
That your "ineptitude" will only create cringe-inducing memories that will haunt you like ghosts in the days and weeks to come, so, better not do this?
Write The Great Fear of Your Life on a card or sticky note, and set it to one side.
(2) What have been its limiting effects? How is/has this greatest fear of your life been a LIMIT for you? Write briefly, on another card or sticky note:
How is it limiting you now?
How has it limited you in the past year?
What did it limit you in, in the past 5 years?
What opportunities, collaborations, opportunities, do you now wish you hadn't passed over or turned down? What do you wish you'd done sooner in life and career?
What’s really going to happen if you reach for more? Is this fear something really true about you?
(3) Ask yourself, how long? Look at your Great Fear, its Limiting Effects. And now, write this figure precisely on a third card or sticky note in days, weeks, months, or years:
How much longer will you let this fear hang around and block all you want to do?
Think about that. Does trying to specify that feel silly? Do you want to choose to let this limit you for another year, another 5 years? Say it a few times to really feel it. "Yes, that fear of mine, you know, I'd really like to let it hold me back another year. Yeah, then I'll really go for what I want after that."
You don't have to. You can learn to create feelings of safety, and to forge forward in wise choice even if there is fear. It’s all up to you.
What can you do?
Eliminate The Fear
One way is to work to minimize and then eliminate its impact on your life. Choose to make your goals more important than the fear - “Even if I am completely, totally ridiculed, I’ll STILL do this project, because eventually I’ll be the expert and no one will laugh at me”. Sometimes this alone will get you through the avoidance, and let you move forward. Prepare to repeat this choice to either divert into lesser behavior due to fear, or head out into expansive behavior anyway. Launch into wise risk and do the action anyway IF you really feel prepared and able to go for it. (You alone know your state of readiness. Don’t force it! Take more time to really BE ready if you need it.)
Or, work to go a little farther, and a little farther, and a little farther, into the action the fear blocks you from. Take small steps as you build new strength and awareness that you really ARE ok when you do this. If you’re afraid that speaking up will get you ostracized, begin to speak up more and more and see that you can do this without the repercussions you’re fearing. The more you eliminate this “big unknown” the more you gain confidence and naturalness in speaking up, just from facing it again and again.
And/Or, Make The Fear Your Learning Ally
A second or complementary way is to make your Great Fear your learning ally. You can turn getting past this into your great strength. Use it as an opportunity for building process and deep reflection. Once you learn how to overcome this fear, you can apply this method to overcome other limitations as well.
How is this limiting you? What kind of wise, go-getting risk-taker would you RATHER be?
Interact with the limitation - What is it trying to protect you from? Are those needs still legitimate? Are there parts of this you can actually meet so that your inner man or woman feels secure?Are there other parts you can change by experiencing the action and realizing there is no fear?
Create a series of 5 steps to repeatedly use when you are faced with this. For example: Stop, Center, Be present, Change fear to strength, Engage with the action. When you automate your response as a process, it frees you up to get immediately into dealing with the challenge.
Determine to go past this fear in small ways repeatedly, and score or reward yourself each time. See how motivating it feels to be building that score tally daily with instances of facing the fear.
Observe and reflect. Learn what quiets the fear. Learn what happens when you just override and go through it. Learn what strategies work best for you as a go-getter, and during your quiet times as well.
As you change, allow your reflections to deepen your experience, such that you can speed up the process of handling challenges like this.
The Great Fear of Your Life only looks like a roadblock. If you walk up to it and wave your hand through it, you can see it’s just a vapor, an illusion of something in your way. You are LIMITLESS. That doesn’t mean you never have fears again - it just means you have an active process to tackle the challenge that gets you jumping in with positive engagement, knowing you can get over and under and through.
Extra Credit: Can you turn a productive activity you’ve feared into something you actually RELISH and love doing? It just takes changing your thought as you repeat the action: “I LOVE doing this. I relish this challenge - it’s so cool, and amazing, I love tackling it. I learn so much when I do it. Let’s do this!” The more you dial in to repeating the action and the thoughts, the more your mind turns on the cool, interesting, curious channels and engages with it. You may even end up looking forward to it!
Sounds simplistic, but simple is often the best. How will you embrace, challenge, confront and ally with the Great Fear of Your Life today?
Keep Growing,
Katherine Lieber coaches and trains on self-leadership, limitlessness, energy health, inner power, and healing the wounded professional to recover core vision, joy, and high-powered performance in the workplace. She is the founder of TitaniumBlue Leadership. Be limitless - be the hero in a world that needs you.
© 2019 Katherine R. Lieber & TitaniumBlue Leadership
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