What is the underlying cause of all fear? It's that you can't handle whatever life puts in your path. It's that simple. If you believe you can deal with anything that comes along, fear fades to the background. The greater your trust in your ability to manage what comes your way, the less fear you will experience. What that translates to is that the better you feel about yourself, the easier it is to face your fears and move through them. The result is that you don't have to control anything in your external world to overcome fear! Instead, look at where the lack of trust in yourself originates: the beliefs you have adopted from others in your life, and from your own past experiences.
It's a good thing to know how something works and why. However, what's more important than knowing where your lack of trust came from is knowing how to develop more confidence in handling anything that comes your way. What we want to focus on right now is how to gain more courage so that choosing from a place of fear is no longer necessary.
When there is fear keeping you from making changes in your life, your body will have the feeling of being closed because you are listening to the parasitic mind and its story, instead of trusting and staying open to the possibilities.
How do you know when your fear is in control? Look at your life. If there's struggle, there's fear at some level. You might have to peel back layers of belief to discover the source of your worry, but trust us, fear is the root of all your conflicts. The struggle comes when you are not truly living in the moment, when you are caught up in the past or the future. Either you are looking back with regret and concern about something you did, or you are looking forward with anxiety about what might happen in the future. Either way you are not present. When you are not in the moment, you are by default stuck in a place of fear. This keeps you out of the flow of life, resulting in struggle and lack, and oftentimes paralysis.
So, what can you do to regain trust in your self? You build trust in small cycles: Belief causes Action causes Results; Bigger Belief causes Bigger Action with Bigger Results. First you have an idea, then you create a plan of action, then you take the first step. Everything else will be dependent on each step, and that's all you have to focus on to be truly in the moment. When something works, take another step. If you have a setback, learn from what didn't work and try it a different way the next time. Every time you give up, you lose more of your self-trust. It's not the boogieman out there that has a death-grip on your reality; it's the parasitic mind and the fear it creates that is in control.
Even if you can't remember a recent time of facing your fears, you have a lot of experience in this area. As an infant and young child, your willingness to face your fears was necessary to your very survival. Have you ever observed a child learning to walk? They fall frequently. Do they curl up in a ball and decide not to try again? No! They try it again and again until they finally take that first step. Then you can't slow them down. When they start moving faster, they usually fall down again. This is how each one of us learned to walk, then to run. It's the same as you take steps to face your fears. Win or lose, taking action is a success. With each success, you will begin to taste what it feels like to have more and more self-confidence. There will be times when what you have to do will be extremely uncomfortable. And sometimes what you do won't work. When that happens, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again, just like when you were a child.
Fear is an innate part of our survival. In early human development it was necessary to keep from being swallowed by saber-tooth tigers and other dangers. This instinctual fear still keeps us safe from real harm, arising during in-the-moment reactions. That's a good thing. However, when fear is used by the parasitic mind as a way to control your actions, it becomes the main armor of protection blocking your energy centers. If you pay attention, you can feel its relentless grip on your body, tensing your muscles if the fear is slight, or causing illness and distress when it is more chronic or more pronounced. Your body is always the best indicator for the level of fear you are allowing to come into your life. Pay attention to its messages and you will begin to see how much fear you are carrying.
As your confidence grows, you will notice that fear never really goes away completely, because each time you expand your zone of comfort, you will face new uncertainty. As long as you continue to grow, you will continue to feel fear. As you stretch yourself, taking new risks, you learn to stop waiting for the fear to go away before you take chances. You know what it feels like, you accept that the fear exists, and you know you can move through it.
Marilyn Schwader uses a unique blend of technology, e-commerce, communication, and spirituality to help her writing coaching clients create and market their work. To find more of her tips, resources, and a schedule of her webinars, teleclasses, and retreats, visit
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