“Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.”
~Anthony Robbins
I know that I seem to talk about fear on this blog a lot but I feel that it is so prevalent right now and fear can be so paralyzing when you have no outlet for it. This is my outlet.
I realized last night that I am so much more crippled by fear then I could see. I was watching Oprah’s life class last night on her network and she just so happened to be talking about living fearlessly. Her guest, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, talked about dancing with your fear (facing them) and that fear is really about changing your story and your state of mind.
He talked about everyone having a story that they keep telling themselves, whether it is that you are worthless or that you are just always going to fail or many other negative things we tell ourselves. He recited a quote that if you tell yourself a lie enough times then you start to believe it, so if your story that you’ve been telling yourself for years is that you are never going to succeed or be anything, eventually you will begin to actually believe it. His theory is that if you change your story, make it more of an affirmation of what you are going to do and who you are going to be, then you change your state of mind and you will begin to believe it.
Oprah posed the question to her audience and those watching at home, “what is the story you’ve been telling yourself all these years?” I thought about it and when I talked to Ms. L. I realized what it was. Not only am I afraid that if I try to really accomplish my dreams it is just going to eventually fail, but I am also afraid of the other end of the spectrum. That I will actually succeed and begin to make that climb up the ladder and that I might do one little thing to mess it all up and end up right back where I started, at the bottom. I’m afraid of the not knowing and of the changes that will come. I’m afraid that I will prove to all of the people who said I would never be anything, that they were right.
Tony Robbins also said something else that rung true to me after he said it. He stated that sometimes we want those fears because it protects us from having to step into the unknown. I was never a completely fearless person, I always tended to be moderately cautious, but I never used to be that person that was so intensely afraid of change and all of the unknown things that are out there that I would sabotage my own self but somehow I have become that person.
So how do I get back to that person who not only accepted change, but welcomed it? How do I become that brave artist again that didn’t care (at least as far as my writing went) about what anyone had to say?
I suppose that “dancing with my fear” is a start. If I don’t face them head on and stop pretending that they do indeed exist then I am never going to remove those fears from my subconscious and my life. Fear can really be crippling and it can have the power to kill your dreams, if you let it. But I’m not going to let it. Thank you for letting me express my fears here to all of you. Knowing I can be vulnerable here helps a lot in the furthering of my dreams.
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310
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