Creating Space…To Be Fearless pt. 2

Creating Space … To Be Fearless pt.2

Techniques to dive deeper into your fears, and emerge on top.

Hey! Welcome to part two of “Be Fearless”. If you didn’t get a chance to read part one, check that out first. And if you did get a chance to read it, then you know more about the psychology and some of the triggers, and how securing my first yoga teaching job at Nina’s Yoga was a HUGE trigger for me. Thankfully, I was able to overcome it, but it didn’t happen by chance. It required me to take some very deliberate steps forward. The first instinct when we feel fear is to turn and run in the other direction, but what if we made the choice to walk right up to fear, and stare right into the face of it?

Explore Your Fear

The reality is, there are times in life when we all feel fearful or at a minimum, anxious about something. We want to pursue a new job, start a new activity, start a business, or even ask someone out. Whatever it may be, anyone who has found themselves frozen in place knows the feeling all too well. However, I believe, the most important thing we can do when the ice-grip of fear starts to take hold is to look it square in the eye, and study it with genuine curiosity. What is it that you are really afraid of? Failure? Looking stupid? Letting someone down? Not being good enough??? As scary as it may be, and as real as the possibility is that any of those things could happen, I’ve learned the real disappointment is giving up before you even try.

In the case of preparing to teach my first class, all of those things came to mind for me. But as I dug deeper into each one, I could properly assess the risk. Who would I really let down by taking a leap of faith into my personal passion of sharing yoga with others? And who is really the judge of if I’m good enough? Who gets to label me as a failure if I know I’ve truly done my best? The more I explored what was really scaring me, the more I was able to discern the rational from the irrational, and to take steps to mitigate any possible risks. I mean, it’s up to me to prepare for a yoga class, to show up ready to teach, and if I do that to the best of my ability, I don’t care what anyone says, I’ve succeeded by showing up when I wanted to run in the opposite direction. I’ve proven myself capable, and I gave it my all. There’s no failure when the effort is real.

So, what is it that YOU really want to do, and what is it, I mean SPECIFICALLY, that’s holding you back? It can be so powerful to write down your goals, and the many reasons why you want to accomplish them. Consider taking it a step further and writing down what scares you. What steps can you take to overcome the aspects that are intimidating? And even if you can’t completely eliminate the fear, which more than likely you can’t, what if you realized that the fear actually serves a greater purpose?

Check out next week’s post as we continue on to step 2. Befriend your fear.

Until next week….

Namaste…