Fear
Thoughts on personal growth, courage, and stepping into your bigger life.
Last week, I wrote about fear, and I asked the provocative question: If you are not excited and scared, are you even living? I’ve been thinking a lot about fear since then. In August 2023, I wrote On the Other Side of Fear, and it feels important to share that story again. Over the coming weeks, I will share more thoughts on fear, and for now, I want to talk about what might be waiting on the other side of your fear…
Two weeks ago, I had my introductory call to the Summer of Love Retreat I will be attending with Kendra Cover this Summer. I also launched THRIVE that same week. What stood out in both groups was that there was both fear and excitement. All the women who will be attending the Summer of Love Retreat (including myself) and the women in THRIVE expressed that they felt excited and scared at the same time. On the Summer of Love Retreat call, Kendra said something that got me thinking. She said, “If you are not excited and scared some of the time, are you even living?”
In his book, Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reasons that our hustle culture is created by the misunderstanding that our existence is insufficient reason to be happy and fulfilled. Some of us run on an often-unconscious belief that we “must prove that we are worthy to exist”. Burkeman describes it as starting each day in deficit of some productivity debt we believe we need to pay off, before we can relax. The trouble is that we never seem to be able to settle this productivity debt, because every time we achieve the impossible, reach the deadline, or finally manage to get slightly ahead, we realize that we now must keep maintaining this new standard of performance and achievement. Consequently, there is no end in sight, and we keep at it day after day, in the hopes that one day we will arrive at this elusive future where we finally feel “good enough” or like we have done enough. Unfortunately, that day is never coming, because we have set it up in a way that we can never get there…
In a recent article I posed the question: What do you believe you deserve? Today I want to explore this question: What if there is a reason why you don’t question whether other people deserve to thrive? You see, our innate being is one of wellbeing and of thriving. We are meant to grow, learn, expand, flourish, thrive… It’s built into our DNA. If you consider how much a baby grows and learns in their first year of life, and how much can change in the first five years of life, you have witnessed the wonder of our innate ability to grow and thrive. What’s even more amazing, is how adaptable we are, and how our nervous systems will adapt to the environment we find ourselves in. We will cultivate behaviours that will help us survive in any environment, and over time, those behaviours become our habits and our patterns. Anything that is learnt, can be unlearnt...
“It is easier to try to be better than you are, than to be who you are.” – This quote by Marian Woodman struck me. So often we treat ourselves like self-improvement projects, thinking that if we could only be better than we are, then everything would be the way we want it to be. If we could achieve that elusive level of perfection, then we would finally be happy, and have all the love, joy, and abundance we are craving… At least, I know this was true for me. I started working with my coach, with the hope that it would help me figure out what was wrong with me, and that I could then fix myself. My coach was unwilling to participate in that experiment, and she kept treating me as if there was nothing wrong with me. I was baffled. And now, seven years later, I get it. None of us are broken. We are simply disconnected from our true nature. We have allowed for so much conditioning to settle into our minds, hearts, and even bodies, that we have completely forgotten who we are...
In a conversation with a client who is in the exploration of her own thriving, she mentioned how, in her incessant drive for more, she often mistakes momentum for meaning. And this is a symptom of living in a manic world driven by a scarcity mindset… Robert Holden calls this our destination addiction. When we believe that there is not enough, that we are not enough, or that we will not have enough, we also inevitably believe that more is better, and we start to think that the whole point of life is to keep chasing more until we arrive at the ever-elusive destination where we finally “have it all”. Lynne Twist reasons this is how we keep the scarcity mindset alive. We have been conditioned to focus on what we lack, not on what we already have. When we pay attention to what we lack, we inevitably believe that more is always better, and we act as if there is simply no other way to be in the world. This is just how it is. What we don’t see, is how we then trap ourselves on a hamster wheel that we can never escape…
I’m not someone who tends to write about the steps you need to take to overcome something, or fix something, and today I want to talk about something Alison Armstrong shared that landed and resonated deeply. And it’s directly connected to our willingness to let ourselves grow, stretch, and ultimately thrive… So, I hope you will indulge me in sharing with you what you could do if you are currently feeling overwhelmed.
At the start of the new school year in September, my daughter’s music teacher handed her a recorder. One of the skills she is mastering this year in Grade 4, is learning to play the recorder. She loves music and loves learning. Since September she has practiced every single day. And every time she masters a new song, she receives a new colour belt. The goal, I’m told, is to first get her first black belt, then reach three gold belts, which will unlock the ultimate prize – a rainbow-coloured belt. She is obsessed with rainbows, so of course a rainbow-coloured belt is the ultimate coveted item right now. I’ll be honest, there have been days where I have had to remind myself that the noise is part of the journey, and that she can’t improve her skill without practice. Then one day it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard her play in a while. A curious question as to why I haven’t heard her play, resulted in tears. “All my friends have moved on to black belts, and I’m still stuck at purple. I’m so far behind…” And there it was. The cry I’ve heard so many times from friends, loved ones, and especially from clients – they fear that they are behind in some way. This is not a new phenomenon, and my daughter certainly isn’t the only one experiencing the feeling of being behind in life. In fact, it saddens me that she is already feeling behind at such a young age...
When I was completing my master’s degree, our professor would always talk about living your dash – which was perhaps a not so elegant way to talk about how we choose to spend the time between our date of birth and our date of death. Today marks the one-year anniversary of my father’s passing, and it has me thinking about how he lived his dash, and how all of us live our dashes.
Over the last two years I have sat with this question: What does it mean to thrive? I used to believe that if I could achieve enough outside success, then I would thrive. When I started my coaching business, I read The Prosperous Coach, in the hopes that I could figure out how to prosper – which is another word for thrive. I was longing to find the secret to thriving / prospering / flourishing / expanding. And I will be honest, initially I thought that I would feel like I was thriving if I were making more money and if I was really successful in my business...
At the end of each year, I complete a Year-End Review. I spend time looking back at the year in granular form. I go and look at one month and one week at a time. What am I looking for? I look at what was happening both personally and professionally. I look at my calendar and my business tracking to see who I was serving, where I was travelling to, and what felt important during each moment in time. I reflect on how I felt, and how I was relating to all that was occurring. Why do I do this? I complete this detailed Year-End Review every year, because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on my life from a zoomed-out perspective with new knowledge that I didn’t have at the time that the events were occurring. It often has me change my perspective on the story I tell myself about the year I just had. And it ensures that I tell myself the truth instead of just holding on to a story...
I want to start this article a little differently to how I would usually start a post. I want to start by sharing this funny video that captures my evolution with KPop Demon Hunters in 15 seconds. And if you don’t know what KPop Demon Hunters are, welcome to the movement. May it inspire you as much as it has inspired me. If you are not a fan, that is totally fine too. I feel a little sad for you. And, you don’t need to a be fan, or even have watched the movie, to get value from this article. It’s just my starting point, and it doesn't need to be yours. So, just hang in here with me for a little bit as I provide some background to why this movie, why this article, and why now?
A minor car accident a month ago was a wake-up call for me. It made me pause and had me face the truth of where I am right now. It’s been seven months since my father’s passing. Since then, my mother, my mother-in-law, and my father-in-law have all been ill this year. And the day before my birthday, my aunt passed away. I have felt myself reeling with shock and confusion over the past eight weeks. I wish I could tell you that I was wise and calm during these intense weeks, but I have not been wise and calm. Far from it. I have fallen into old defensive patterns in a futile attempt to make myself feel safe…
During the Summer I took a trip to Whistler with my family. Whistler is a town north of Vancouver, British Columbia, that's home to Whistler Blackcomb, one of the largest ski resorts in North America. People go there to ski in the Winter, and they go there for adventure biking in the Summer. There is a cable-car (gondola) that takes you up Whistler Mountain. Additionally, there is another gondola that takes you between the two peaks of Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain. This is called the Peak-to-Peak gondola and is an epic ride up the mountain. Once you are half-way up Whistler Mountain, there is an option to take an open chairlift to the peak of Whistler Mountain. The Peak Express chairlift is your access to the Top of the World Summit, Cloudraker Skybridge and Raven's Eye Lookout. This chairlift ride is an exhilarating experience that takes you over top of an ancient glacier while cresting over a 100-foot vertical cliff at the top. I have a morbid fear of falling – not heights, I’m pretty ok with being high up. I’m terrified of falling though, so I don’t like feeling like I might fall. So, going up the mountain in an open chairlift was not an option I was even considering. It was clear in my mind that that was something I could not do...
In April of this year, I did a thing. With the gentle nudging of my coach, I participated in a professional rebranding photo shoot. The photo shoot took place in the midst of tremendous grief and sorrow. I was still reeling from the shock of my father’s passing. If I’m being honest, I’m still reeling from it now. There are days where the grief of it is so intense that my heart physically aches, and the tears have a valve of their own that cannot be turned off… And yet, the photos are more real, more authentic, more true than any photos I have ever taken. They reflect someone who is more grounded, more present, more connected to herself, Life, and others. They reflect who I am without any filters or pretense. They are raw and real. They are vulnerable. They are beautiful. This photo shoot in April was not some spur of the moment, spontaneous event. It was part of a much larger agreement with my coach to start to see myself more clearly, to claim the value of the work that I do, and to realign my brand to clearly reflect that. It was part of a project called “Seeing Myself”. Why am I sharing this with you, and what does seeing myself have to do with the title of this article? Everything really. When we slow it down...
My father died believing he was a failure. From his perspective, he had failed, because he had been unable to secure full-time employment after losing his job during the pandemic. He lost his house and had almost no money when he died. He based a lot of his self worth on external measures of success, and he believed that he did not measure up. However, that's now what I saw or believed...
A few weeks ago, in conversation with a client, she asked a powerful question: How do I know what my truth is? The answer to that question is multi-layered. Here’s why…
I recently finished reading, Little Earthquakes: A memoir by Sarah Mandel where she recounts the heartbreaking story of her six year long battle with stage four metastatic breast cancer and the ensuing trauma that unfolded from that. Mandel was a therapist who used narrative therapy to help her clients work through their trauma, and then chose to apply her own therapy methods in the writing of her memoir. It was a way for her to make sense of the trauma she had walked through...
Usually in January we hear a lot of talk about goals, dreams, aspirations, ways that we are going to be better and do better. This time of year tends to be a time when there is a heavy focus on self-improvement. Although, I will say that this year, I feel like the energy is different. I don’t know if it’s only on my side of the world, or whether you have experienced something similar? And I’m attributing it to all that is occurring in the world at the moment – wars, elections, wildfires. One colleague said what I was thinking. He said, “It feels like it’s the pandemic all over again...” I will share that that is certainly where my fear-based mind went immediately, because I remember that there were these out-of-control wildfires in Australia at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic really hit. And if you are feeling less inspired and excited this January, I want to invite you to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. My sense is that in many ways, we are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, and that our nervous systems are constantly bombarded with more things to process. And it’s a lot. It really is. And this is why I want to discuss the difference between self-improvement and self-growth...
These past few weeks I’ve been riddled with guilt, so much so that my guilt would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I would feel my heart beating in my chest, and my mind racing with worry. So often, my clients share how they carry their own guilt for choices they’ve made, especially when others do not approve of those choices. Recently, I had a deep conversation with my coach about guilt, and I had a profound insight that has changed the way I see my guilt. And I want to share with you here what I’ve learnt about guilt...
My coach recently gifted me a book by Michael Neill called Things I’m Avoiding Doing: A four-week program to overcome procrastination and get shit done. The title of the book is misleading, because it makes it sounds like the focus of the book is to learn how to get over procrastination and get more done. In a world, where we are already overloaded with too much to do, it’s probably not surprising that we are not getting everything done. And yet, when you read the book, you’ll discover that it’s not really about getting more shit done, and that Michael Neill doesn’t believe that procrastination is actually real...
Recently I shared how shame can get in the way of us living more wholeheartedly. Today I want to talk about numbing. All of us numb from time to time. Some of us numb more than others, and yet all of us numb. What does it mean to numb? Numbing is what we do to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. It’s what we do when we are resisting feeling our true feelings about something. And usually, we resist our true feelings about something, because we have convinced ourselves that it would be too painful to feel our feelings, or that we might get overwhelmed by our feelings if we let ourselves feel them...
In April, I shared with you about the launch of my private six-month coaching group called Living As If You Matter. This group is all about living as if you truly matter, or as Brené Brown would put it, wholehearted living. Today I want to talk about what gets in the way of living more wholeheartedly or living as if you matter, and the antidote to it. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that the biggest thing that gets in the way of us living more fully as our true selves, or living as if we really matter, is something that we all experience – shame. Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. It’s the feeling that makes us want to hide or run away. It’s what sometimes makes us overreact in certain situations. According to Brené Brown, “Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable… Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”
A while ago I wrote an article about what your perfectionism is really trying to tell you. Perfectionism is a misunderstanding that we need to earn our self-worth or prove that we are enough or worthy. The truth is that you came into this world worthy and then got disconnected from that truth over time. So, embracing your imperfections is a way that you can choose to reclaim your inherent worthiness...
How do you relate to failure? Do you believe failure is an essential part of success? Or do you believe that failure is to be avoided at all costs? How we relate to failure hugely impacts our openness and willingness towards risk taking and trying new things. If we see failure as something that is “bad” and that needs to be avoided at all costs, we will be less open to taking risks or trying things that are new, different, unfamiliar, or out of our comfort zone. However, if we believe that failure is part of the process, and that success without failure isn’t possible, we would be more willing to fail.
A question I love to ask my clients, is: What’s your context to life? This question reveals so much about how someone is relating to their experience of life. A context to life, is the story we tell ourselves about life, about ourselves, and about others. It’s the things we believe to be true about Life, about ourselves, and about other people. For example, someone might believe that Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Or they might believe that life is hard, and only the strong survive. Or they might believe that life is the relentless pursuit of more. Or that life is unfair. Or that life is a gift. Or that life is a journey. What we tell ourselves about life, determines how we might respond to different situations IN our life.
I have shared about my experiences with perfectionism before in my writing about a Perfection Detox: Learning to trust yourself and I have shared how I battle with my P Twins – i.e., Perfectionism and Pleasing – whenever I am navigating important situations or events in my life. Perfectionism isn’t just about wanting everything to be clean and neat, or orderly. Perfectionism can take different forms, and often people who are perfectionists, see their perfectionism as a moral compass or guideline to measure their personal “goodness” as a person. In other words, somewhere they internalised the message that they are only a good person, or lovable when they are perfect. This of course sets you up for a lifetime of struggle, frustration, and failure, because there is no such thing as the perfect person who always does everything right. So, you end up living in constant fear that someone will discover that you are not perfect, and that you will be ostracised from the very groups of people you are trying to belong with.
Recently I asked whether your permacrisis has become a state of being? I received quite the response from this community about that article. And so today, I want to say more about it from a different perspective. I want to talk about worry and anxiety.
Recently, Carolyn Freyer-Jones wrote about Permacrisis. She explained that Permacrisis “refers to a state of ongoing instability and insecurity, where unexpected challenges seem to arise constantly”. We all know people who live in a constant state of Permacrisis, regardless of anything happening in the world. Their lens (based on upbringing and other circumstances) is Permacrisis. They look out into the world, and they see Permacrisis everywhere. They find things to worry about and they experience life as one emergency after another. Even when things are going well in their lives, they live in constant anticipation that something will go wrong. We get to choose who we want to be and how we want to show up in the world. I create my life in every moment by how I show up to each moment...
The other day on my morning walk, I came across three deer. They wanted to get past me to the other side of a set of stairs. Their fear prevented them from doing so. And this got me thinking. Isn’t this just how we are as humans? We reach a fork in the road of life. We are faced with a transition or a challenge in our lives. We tell ourselves we want to change, and yet we stay frozen right there in the middle of the road, too afraid to take the next step. We consider what might be on the other side. We take a few small steps forward; only to take three big steps back again, when things start shifting...
