They Are Only Fears

Have I written about fears already??

Oh well, never hurts to talk about them again. LOL.

Fears Part 1

Fears. Yours will trick you. They will convince you to stay home, to hide from the world, to play small.

Don’t listen.

Your fears will tell you stories and tales about how dangerous the world is, how scary, how threatening. Your fears will lie to you and tell you are you are not good enough, not smart enough, not resourceful and strong enough.

These lies will create all kinds of barriers for you. As we believe our thoughts, sometimes, we get drawn off course. Sometimes waaaay off course. Your fears will divert you, waylay you, and deceive you.

Do not listen to them.

Fears are a natural part of our survival instinct. They are designed to keep us safe and alive.

If we encounter a saber tooth tiger and it harms us or someone we know, we will want to keep a safe distance between ourselves and that threat in the future. This is natural and sensible.

What can happen though, is that our brains can get stuck in fear overdrive. We don’t shake it off. We can let fear take over our whole system and paralyze us. Fear can get under our skin, kick our sympathetic nervous systems into high gear and we can get stuck there. Stuck in this heightened state of hyper-vigilance that doesn’t allow our creativity, ease and happiness to flow through.

So it is important to differentiate between real threats and perceived threats.

Are our fears unfounded or do they have some truth?

If you see that your fears are just holding you back, informing your decisions and not in a good way, label them as such, stick em on a shelf and carry on with your fabulous life.

Don’t play small. Don’t come from a place of fear which is limiting and of a low vibration.

Get out and do the things that scare you, the things you know will challenge you but won’t kill you. Lean into those places. Get really, really friendly with your fears. Get up close and personal with them and face them.

Your fears will try to trick you into staying home and hiding, but only if you believe your thoughts. Only if you let those passing fear thoughts have solidity. They are not solid and tangible. Believe me.

This I tell myself, every day.

Fears. Part 2

It is very important to not stop doing that which scares you, challenges you and pushes you well out of your comfort zone.

To do so is to wilt and wither, shrink and shrivel into a diminutive form of your truer self.

As I sit myself down in the departure lounge, I can feel my old confidence slowly returning.

It has been years since I have ventured out on my own without a companion, flying to another country with no one meeting me on the other end.

It has been ten years at least since I did this.

All the trips I have taken since then have been either with a loved one, or going to meet a loved one, and about 90% of those trips have been to India, with a party to meet me and greet me

at the end.

This is totally unlike what I was used to in the period before that. From the age of about 17 to 35, I traveled solo, always and often. Often without any plan or reservation upon landing, frequently without knowing the language of the country I would be living in. In those days, a year would not go by without me getting cabin fever and itchy feet and hopping on a plane to somewhere fun and exotic.

When you do something that frequently, it ceases to be scary.

Consistently doing something wild or outrageous makes you impervious to many kinds of fear.

I felt as confident landing down in a totally new place as I did going to the kitchen for a drink of water.

Fast forward ten years to today. I was a little surprised to notice my apprehension mounting, replacing my usual excitement about an upcoming trip with an unfamiliar trepidation. This feeling was new.

Travel had always been my comfort zone, my place of freedom and utter happiness. What was this strange anxiety that was rising in my belly about traveling alone and getting back out into the world?

So new! So terrifying.

I didn’t know if I would remember how to do it. How to fake my comfort and ease until it was real.

How to feel completely at home in a completely unfamiliar environment, recognizing the truth of one world, one love, and living it through my actions and travels.

It is so important to continue in life, to do the things that scare us. I understand why people stay home, why they don’t travel, why they don’t branch out. It is cozy, it is comfortable, it is homey and arguably safe.

But what do we lose when we play it safe?

What do we lose when we fail to rise, to push ourselves forward into unfamiliar territory?

I think, our fear grows. Our fear of the unknown, of things we can’t control, fear, not trust, grows and reigns.

I can’t live like that.

Leading up to this trip, I was amazed at the host of freaked out feelings I was having. This was not the “me” I know. The brave, fearless, adventurer I have been my entire life. I didn’t recognize myself and these new emotions. Nor did I care for them, much.

Now, as I begin to feel my traveling feet again, as I begin to feel the freedom of not staying locked in a box, as I start to remember my self, I rejoice! I fling open my arms and say “welcome BACK, old and dear friend!”

The world may have changed a LOT in ten years and I am a different person, but I will never let myself get caught in a rut of doing the same thing, year after year and not challenging myself. I will not.

Change = growth = learning = EVOLUTION! And I need that. Without it, I will shrivel up, dry up, and die.

I need to feel alive. I need to trust, have faith, step OUT, be adventurous, take risks, be open, be willing, be free. I need that, or I am not me.

Life truly is too short to limit yourself to living small or operating out of fear.

Whatever flight looks like for you, make sure to take it.