Don’t let fear crash on your couch like an unwanted ex! Understand its tricks, distinguish protective fear from limiting fear, and break up with it like a boss. Communicate with yourself, educate yourself, start small, build a support system, and embrace courage. Cheers to kicking fear to the curb! 🦸♀️
Break Up with Fear Read More »
The post emphasizes overcoming fear to pursue dreams and offers mindfulness activities to help. The author shares their personal journey and encourages trying these activities for 30 days. The activities are categorized in 4-week program, aiming to develop awareness and integrate mindfulness. The author invites feedback and encourages sharing.
I will cook my first solo Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Fear is what makes Thursday my first solo run. I guess even when I was young, deep inside of me there was a budding feminist. I was a quiet rebel. I refused to ‘learn’ how to cook or clean because those were the expectations of me. I didn’t find any joy in learning how to do something just because my future husband would require it of me. So I steered clear of the kitchen for as long as I could. But that was only part of the reason. The other part was that I was scared that I wouldn’t be good at it. My mother and grandmother were boss cooks. They made dishes by eyeballing and using a pinch of this and a dash of that. It was both fascinating intimidating. How would I ever be able to do that? I felt inadequate so I avoided it. Cause you know how older women are, they were always ‘trying to help’ me if showed interest in making something. but their directions were confusing. “Add more salt,” they would say. “How much I would ask?”. I was looking for a precise answer. Something that I could measure. But bless their hearts, they would always say something like, “Just a dash.” What in the world was a dash, to me, a novice in the kitchen? It didn’t make sense. And so I quit early in life. I decided that cooking was one of those mysteries I would never unlock. And I went back to my books. Books never confused me. But then one day I realized that because I was a strong reader, I could follow a recipe. And slowly but surely I tried things on my own, never when my well meaning mother was around (my grandmother had passed by then) because she was good at cooking, but not necessarily good at teaching me in a way that worked for me. I tried cooking (using recipes) on my own, in the safety of my own kitchen. It was exhilarating. I loved the precise measurements and clear directions of a recipe. I could follow the directions and end up with something delicious. And the more comfortable I became with making a particular dish, the more I would experiment with new herbs, spices and ingredients. I began to enjoy cooking because I learned it in a way that made sense to me. I will likely never be a gourmet chef, but I can cook. I write those words with confidence. I am sure of it now. I can and do cook regularly. And I enjoy it. I will cook my first solo Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday confidently. I am not a boss cook like my mom. My sister is the new boss cook in the family, but I can hold my own. I learned that cooking was like everything else I wanted to learn in life. I read up about it, I practiced, I made mistakes, I gave myself feedback and got feedback from others, and tried and tried again. Eventually I got to a place where I felt confident, even though I still don’t know what a pinch is, or what a dash is. I use tools to measure things out, I don’t go from memory or instinct. I like the comfort of using precise measurements to get a consistent outcome, and learning new ways to make old favorites. And since I love learning cooking has become fun. I have applied my lessons learned from cooking to my life. I try not to let fear or frustration hold me back from learning new things. I know the way I learn and I use that to help me add new skills to my toolbox. Just like I literally cooked my way to confidence, I learn my way through new things.
Cooking Up Confidence Read More »
This week I have had to do many hard things – have hard conversations, admit uncomfortable truths, plan a sad trip. I did not want to do any of those things because they are … you guessed it – hard by definition. I used to succumb to my fear of the hard thing. Not surprising, that was when I struggled with depression and emotional outbursts. The correlation between being dominated by fear and feeling sad or angry all the time makes sense to me now. I wasn’t being my authentic self because fear of rejection or separation had me convinced that doing the hard thing was worse than avoiding it. I did not set out to get therapy to learn how to do hard things or become my authentic self. I did not have that language when at 18 I decided I was tired of being locked in a mind that was barely ever happy. I just wanted to feel better. There were so many peaks and valleys on that journey. To be honest there were times when I felt like I wasn’t making any progress, like it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t know then that therapy wasn’t a magic lamp, and my therapist wasn’t a genie. I just wanted to feel better. It took more than 20 years of emotional work and at least 8 different therapists. Slowly I began to say the hard things when I was calm, as opposed to waiting until I was so angry that I used the hard things to eviscerate who ever dared to offend. To be clear it wasn’t easy, I remember the anxiety that I felt about telling a loved one a truth that felt shameful, or being assertive with a person in a position of power. Talk about stress. At first I did the hard things like a colt learning to walk. I was clumsy and sometimes terrible at it. Over time, I learned that prioritizing which hard things I wanted to focus on matters – I didn’t have to address everything; I learned that tone matters – no one wants to feel chastised; I learned that preparing the person for what I was about to say matters – no one likes to be ambushed; I learned that environment matters – choosing a place and time that works for both parties makes hard conversations easier; I learned that being honest and kind matters – honesty does not have to be brutal. I learned that avoidance only only guarantees my misery. Sometimes it worked out well and at other times not so great. But eventually I stopped exclusively pleasing everyone else and silently resenting them for the sacrifice I had chosen to make, and found balance. Hard things still make me anxious but I do them. Doing the hard things helped me discover my authentic self and freed me from a vicious cycle of pleasing and resentment. I have learned that hard things matter, and that saying them and doing them thoughtfully also matters. If you are a praying person, pray for me this weekend. I have to take a trip that is a sad trip. It is hard, and I am going to do it; avoiding is not an option.
Setting a goal is a BIG deal. It’s you looking out into the great unknown and agreeing with yourself that you are going to reach for something. And if you are like me, the minute you make that agreement with yourself, life tries you. When that happens I have some choices to make. Do I give in to the obstacles and let them become my excuses? Or do I treat them like an obstacle course and jump, dodge and scale them? It wasn’t something magical that materialized overnight, but I did learn how to turn my obstacles into a to do list. The first thing I have to do is figure out what I am afraid of. I have to face the big scary monster in my head so I know how to beat it. From my many years in therapy I know what my recurring fears are. You can usually figure out what you are afraid of by asking yourself what is the worst that could happen. For example, I wanted to ride my bike across the 70 foot high bridge, but I had never done it before. I was afraid that I would try, fail, and be humiliated. That may not make sense to those of you reading this, but where I live people older than me ride their bikes across those bridges while smiling and waving. It would be quite embarrassing to be passed by one of them while I was struggling or worse yet, walking and pushing my bike. The shame!!!! Anyway, knowing that my fear was really about being humiliated helped me to decide how I would face it. When I know what I am afraid of, I can use that to set a goal within my locus of control. In other words, I set the goal as doing something not achieving something. For example, in the bridge example the goal became doing the thing, not what other people would think of me while I was doing the thing. That may seem easy in this scenario, but let’s try it with a different example, like applying for a new role. The goal becomes actually applying, I can control that. I can’t control if I am offered the role or not, but I can control the effort I put in. So, the goal becomes the effort. With the goal being the effort, I can now make my to do list. With the bike example, riding more and more, for longer and longer, so that I could build my stamina was the to do list. With this blog, getting a word press account, creating the site, finding photos, and writing regularly are some of the things on the to do list. Sometimes having an accountability partner and checking in with them regularly is also on the to do list because that works for me. I firmly believe that your to do list has to be personal to you. Sometimes fear is real and it saves us from danger. It makes all the sense in the world to be afraid of dangerous situations. But when it is not danger, maybe you can turn those obstacles into a to do list, give fear a run for its money and go after the thing you want to try. On this journey to chocolate serenity, we are giving fear no wins. Again, I only take calculated risks, meaning I only risk what I am comfortable losing. To date all that I have honestly lost is the fear. What I have gained is confidence, joy and more peace. And although I don’t yet wave on the way up the bridge, at least I am on the bike, not pushing it.
Obstacle? Or to do list? Read More »