Fear can be defined as: an unpleasant emotion concerning the outcome of something or the safety of someone, caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. It can be based on the perceived threat of physical, mental, spiritual or emotional harm.
As you pursue your goals, you will have to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone, in order to make progress. This includes exploring, implementing and letting go of old habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. As you move beyond your comfort zone, your old comfortable ways will be challenged, making your uncomfortable and increasing the potential for the unpleasant feelings of fear to arise. It’s essential to breakthrough your fears if you want to be successful.
There are a variety of ways in which fears prevent you achieving your goals – here are three ways fear stops you.
1. Fears Drain You
So often in our lives we develop fears and anxieties from real experiences, other people’s experiences, or imagined fears that we create in our mind. These fears can arise be in relation to work, relationships, leisure, finances and many other things. They affect your peace of mind, create stress from replaying it in your mind and have you avoiding situations of perceived threat – ‘just in case’.
Carrying around your fears also drains your mental, physical and spiritual energies; thus making it harder to make headway. Your fears can drain you, if you don’t address them.
2. Fears Can Keep You Feeling Stuck
Fear breeds fear and increases the struggle. If you’re are not careful, you can allow your fears or past experiences to control you, and to erode your confidence. This can reduce your courage to confront your fears. It can prevent you from taking action, leaving you stuck and unable to move forward. The more you avoid the thing you fear, the more stuck you become by it – it becomes a vicious circle. If not addressed, your fears can keep you feeling stuck.
3. Fears Keep You living In Regret
Having fears can make it difficult to take action. And without the necessary actions, you will find it difficult to make progress on your goals. You may even decide it’s too hard and give up.
Giving up on your goal though, can leave you with a sense of emptiness and loss. Thus leaving you full of regret for what you would’ve, could’ve and should’ve achieved. Instead of than having a sense of achievement, you end up looking back in regret saying things like: “I wish I had …”, “I should have …” , “I could have …”, “why didn’t I …” or “why did I …”. Fears can keep you stuck in regret.
Facing Your Fears
Identifying and addressing your fears increases your capacity to avoid regret and empower yourself to live the life you desire. As you breakthrough your old fears, you will achieve greater success.
What are the past experiences which keep playing on your mind? What are the fears which are preventing you from living achieving your goals, living with purpose and living an inspired life?
What’s one fear that you’ve had to work through in order to achieve an important goal? Please share your thoughts on today’s blog post topic below.
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