Is Fear Holding You Back?

17/09/2006

A while back I made a decision to share my learning and experiences as a coach with a wider audience through writing and publication. Weeks ago I started with this article on the topic of fear. Somewhere I got stuck, put the article aside and than failed to return to it. In fact I completely abandoned all writing. What only recently was a source of joy and self-expression, became the object of anguish and felt more and more out of reach.

Being a firm believer that choice is always ours and every moment is a moment of choice, today I decided to find out what was stopping me from writing. And I realized it was the very topic itself: fear. That in reading and writing about fear I had hit on my own fears around writing, and that, not being aware of this, I unconsciously had put fear in the control seat. And from its high and mighty place, fear decided to stop all writing immediately. What if I lacked the talent? What if nobody would read what I wrote? Or worse, what if they would and than not like it? Or what if they did like it and demanded more? What if I actually had to make a full commitment and become more disciplined? Way too many “what if’s” for fear to allow me to continue on my chosen path.

We are often sabotaged in our efforts to act on what we want by our fears. Not only does fear prevent us from making a decision or taking the first step, even after we have started the process of creating new realities, fear continues to claim its veto right. And when it does, we tend to stop, surrender, procrastinate and give up. We hurry back to the old and familiar status quo, even if we know this is not where we want to be. We resist change, even if our heart cries for it.

If we don’t break through this impasse, we basically choose to remain in a situation, a career, a live we know we don’t really want. I would even go a step further, and say: where we are not supposed to be. But we believe that fear, like love, is something that overcomes us, is outside of our control and in control of us. If we want to move beyond out fears, we first must confront this belief in order to take the magic out of fear and bring it in within our power.

The second step is to call the culprit by its name. This can require some deep digging. Fear can manifest itself in very subtle ways. We often don’t recognize our fears and what role they are playing. Acknowledging your own fears can be scary and takes courage. We are much more skilled in rationalizing our unwillingness to move and act with practical considerations that sound enough truthful to us. I just don’t have the time. I have other responsibilities. I don’t have a bad life. I must first do a,b and c. I am such and such person. It is not my fault. But if we are aware of what is really at play, we can do something about it. It was only when I realized fear was holding me back in my writing I could start the process of right-sizing it from FEAR, a paralyzing roadblock to action and fulfillment, to ‘fear’, an ally and protector…more on this below.

Fear is mysterious and seldom logical. Mostly we are afraid of things that do not exist or have not happened yet, and not really the event itself, but how we will feel as the result of the event. And we associate fear primarily with negative results: fear of failure, fear of lacking skills, fear of harm. We are less aware that we are also afraid of positive results, often at the same time. When embarking on a new project we might fear failure and the resulting feelings of shame or self-doubt, but also the consequences and responsibilities (e.g. more projects) that success might bring. At a network function we might fear both not being noticed (I am not interesting) and to be visible (I don’t know what to say).

When we are looking to make changes in our lives and careers we are excited but also scared of what we may find on our journeys. The closer we get to our true selves the scarier it tends to get. What if it turns out we have all this talent and opportunities? But equally scary, what if we what we find disappoints us?

There is a famous quote by Marianne Williamson that says: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

The fear of this “powerfulness beyond measure”, or what we coaches sometimes call “untapped potential” has a fiery companion in the fear of untapped nothingness, that once we let go of what is not working for us, there is literally nothing out there to replace it with. And this is a tricky area. Because being afraid of not having what it takes also means being afraid to be stuck with what we have and know we don’t really want. A spiral of interconnecting fears that keep referring back to each other.

We mostly think about fear as something negative. But fear’s intention is not to be a negative presence in our lives. Fear is a protector. Its role is not to prevent us from doing what we want, but to protect us from things that are not good for us. Fear is for us, not against us. When fear knocks on the door, it is trying to tell us something. Fear is our ally, and is looking out for our best interests, not an authority figure who knows better than us. The key is to listen and team up, to create a relationship with the experience of fear that is positive and empowering. The same deepest fear Williamson refers to in the quote above also holds the key to our deepest truths.

Our fears, once we recognize them, are very real to us, even if they are irrational. We cannot just simply ignore or suppress them, or face them head-on, although that is what we often think we should do. Without understanding where they come from, why they feel so real, changing our attitude and doing our soul research, they will always lure on the background, pop up at unexpected moments and keep pulling us backwards or in directions we know in our heart we don’t want to go.

Take a moment here and ask yourself the question “is fear holding me back?” And even if the answer is a vague maybe, do yourself a huge favor, and allow yourself some time to explore what it is you might be afraid of.

Written By Jacinta Hin (jacinta_hin@hrc-network.com), celebrated and approved writer for kimknightcoaching