Choosing From a Place of Fear

In this episode, I’m going to talk about “Choosing From a Place of Fear”.  How many of us, myself included, have made decisions based on fear?  Whether we admit it or not, we tend to choose the path that is most comfortable or familiar.  And yet, some of the most profound changes in our lives come from the decisions we make when we don’t allow fear to reign.  

Transcript

Welcome to the Dontbeacrumbqueen podcast.  My name is Sher and I’m your host.

 In this episode, I’m going to talk about “Choosing From a Place of Fear”.  How many of us, myself included, have made decisions based on fear?  Whether we admit it or not, we tend to choose the path that is most comfortable or familiar.  And yet, some of the most profound changes in our lives come from the decisions we make when we don’t allow fear to reign.  

 Fear of the unknown is nothing new to the human race.  It can either be paralyzing or freeing.  It all depends on how we respond to it.  When we make a decision from a place of fear, we ultimately find ourselves settling.  We stay in relationships we know we should leave or stay in jobs we’re not happy in.  You name the scenario.  We’ve all done it.  

 Decision making isn’t easy.  We’re always wondering if we’re making the right one or not.  It’s our nature to want to make the “safe” choice but always being safe causes us to live small.  We don’t challenge ourselves to step out of our comfort zone because that’s where the “What Ifs” live!  What if I leave this relationship and I don’t find anyone else?  What if I quit this job and can’t find a better one?  

 But what if you DO?!  

 No one can predict the future, but at some point you have to stop letting fear keep you from trusting your own intuition.  Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you’ll instantly have no fear.  It means sometimes, you just have to do it scared.  If you make a decision and it doesn’t turn out the way you thought, it’s not a failure.  You’ve gained a life experience.  It means you explored beyond your safety net.  You took a chance and now you know.

 We’ve all had those times in life where we knew we shouldn’t be making the decision we were about to, but did it anyhow.  I know I did.  I shushed that still small voice within myself that was encouraging me to choose differently.  I chose the less scary path because at that time in my life, I just wasn’t ready to face my fear and do the “hard” thing.  The wonderful thing about that is we just get to go around the mountain one more time until we finally hit our WALL.  The wall where we say enough is enough.  I don’t want to live like this anymore.  We finally choose to look beyond our fear and trust that it will all work out.  We’re worth it.

 And there’s the learning….

 We weren’t created to live a safe, non-confrontational life. We weren’t meant to be liked by everyone or please everyone. We were meant to walk through the scary places and scale the mountain tops.  We were meant to persevere through the barren valleys to discover the land of abundance.  We were meant to learn to become compassionate and humble.  The things we think are roadblocks were put in our path to develop these characteristics.  Things you’ll never learn in your comfort zone.

 If you’ve been living in fear it’s going to take time to learn how to change that.  Our emotions (and fear is one of them) are designed to help keep a “pulse” on how we’re feeling but we should never make an emotion-based decision.  If you don’t have clarity outside of your emotions, don’t make the decision until you do.  Gather as much information as you can, look at the alternatives, and weigh the benefits (even the unseen ones) and the costs of making the decision. 

 At some point in this process, we all feel a stirring within us when it comes to decision making.  Fear doesn’t have to hold you captive.  But only you get to decide if you’re living the life you want or if you’re going to continue being a prisoner.

 I hope you choose the former.  There’s an amazing life waiting for you on the other side of your fear ~ I am living proof of that.  Do it.  Even if you have to do it scared.  Do it.  You’ve got this.