A Step-by-Step Guide to Release Fear and Show Up Powerfully

A Step-by-Step Guide to Release Fear and Show Up Powerfully

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Community Conversations

When was the last time you scared yourself? Or went out on a limb for someone, or something? Or really stood for something powerful and greater than yourself?

Most days, you aren’t called to serve in big ways. In fact, most of your service might seem pretty small or inconsequential. That’s probably because your service occurs like a job—make that copy, write that email, process that transaction, etc. The result of your work is often…just more work. You’re not moving big ideas or cultural innovations forward in your J-O-B. You’re pushing numbers and papers.

But when you look into your heart and ask if you’re really happy, there’s nothing about the way your job is occuring that’s inspiring. It’s more like soul-sucking, right? 

What’s in a JOB?

The concept of a job comes from the industrial revolution where business owners wanted to optimize for the greatest and most efficient production. Having a job also meant that you had a reliable source of income, as people usually stayed at corporations for their whole life.

However, this has changed in the last 30 years or so. Despite changes to the economy, and lockdowns inspired by COVID-19, the workforce is even more mobile. That old concept of ‘job’ is being rolled into contemporary work as well. As we speak, your post-industrial age job is STILL being designed to be scalable, repeatable, and autonomic. No wonder why people are afraid of Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking away their jobs! 

So now you don’t have fulfilling work OR job security. This is not sustainable for our society, as things still need to be built, businesses still need to be run, and people still need to support their families, and invest in their dreams.

The world of work just isn’t designed to inspire what is great about human beings—your capacity for love, connection, and creativity. 

Within each of us sits a vast and untapped source of power. A source that you learn to cultivate through ancient wisdom traditions and practices. These methods simply aren’t taught in mainstream “school” anymore. I’m not sure why, because humans are a lot more productive and fulfilled when we’re tapped into our inner knowing of who we truly are. Don’t you think?

Groups of humans, even just one human, can surmount seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve something great when they tap into a deeper source of knowledge, inspiration and energy.

We can break through perceived barriers, impress even the most stubborn of critics, and learn to fly where we once walked when we cultivate our energy and learn to express our unique, god-like powers.

So when you have that opportunity in life, to surmount a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, what’s holding you back? 

 

It’s time to do a FEAR inventory. 

  1. Where do you hold back in life? Some examples:
  • Calling people out on their B.S.
  • Holding humans (including self) to a higher standard of ethics and morality
  • Speaking truth to power
  • Taking initiative to make important changes
  • Asking for what you need
  • Finding the community or group of friends that inspire and uplift you
  • …and more?

     2. Now that you’ve identified your list, pay attention to where you feel like you give your power away. What are those moments? When:

  • Someone criticizes me
  • I make a mistake
  • I say the wrong thing
  • Burp or fart in public
  • Whatever!

     3. And what are you afraid of?

  • People won’t like me
  • I’m not good enough, tall enough, beautiful enough, etc.
  • Disappointing others
  • Being useless or not wanted anymore
  • Being perceived as stupid or dumb
  • Standing up or out
  • Being seen

     4. Now that you’ve seen these things about you, make a new commitment to yourself. Who will you be in the future? I will be:

  • Confident
  • Sexy
  • Charming
  • Funny
  • Smart
  • Resourceful
  • Helpful
  • Romantic
  • Etc.

Take your commitment out into the world and be your commitment for a whole day. Let every action be infused with your commitment, no matter how uncomfortable you get.

I’d like to hear what you accomplish when you release your fears. Leave a comment below!

 

Get Rid of Fear Once and For All

Get Rid of Fear Once and For All

by | Dec 7, 2017 | Community Conversations

There’s nothing predictable about our journey here, and we’re not well-served living with anything less than our complete passion and intensity. I believe a true journey is an adventure defined by the lack of a clear destination. Or not knowing exactly where you are going or how to get there. Or that your success is not guaranteed. A potential outcome is that you won’t ever come back. In short, embarking on a journey is to embark on an adventure where you have nothing to lose, so you might as well play all out.

When you have nothing to lose, you’ll take more risks.

During the Cold War, people lived knowing that just a few nuclear bomb detonations could start a nuclear winter. This would effectively end society as we know it. During this time, people took more risks. Anyone who is familiar with the year 1969 can attest—a lot of crazy shit happened then.

Faced with uncompromising options, people had the confidence to tackle their fears head on and make a stand for what they believed in. They took chances because the risk it wouldn’t work out was more acceptable than living a life in fear and bondage.

Today is not much different than our recent past. As most historians will affirm, humanity moves in cycles. We repeat old patterns and make mistakes in new, slightly more interesting ways (in the most optimistic sense). We also find new philosophies to live by and to express our wondrous, creative, human potential.

This is really the breakthrough of modern society. Not all our technological advances, not all our forays into new, more dangerous ‘final’ frontiers, both physically and subjectively. Our breakthrough is that we’re still living in a universe filled with incredible beauty and abominable pain—two vastly different experiences, a paradox not to be resolved.

“After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.” ~ Albert Camus

Art is an expression of what we’re experiencing emotionally and helps us to convey our inner world. What Camus is identifying in the above quote via art is what also he identifies in humanity.

Now what?

So, you’re probably asking, what am I to do with this, Matt? Well, I’m encouraging you to take more risks. Find more beauty. Discover the tension between your beauty and your pain.  Take time off to feel, to be. Discover what you’d do with no screens in front of you for a few hours. What are you passionate about when you don’t have life breathing down your neck? Who ARE you anyway? And I don’t mean, what do you DO, for work, or even in life. What turns you ON?

So let fear go. Taking one afternoon to do life completely differently isn’t going to make or break you, but the possibility of what you discover just might.

Let me know your experience with this exercise in the comments below! I’m always curious to hear how you’re evolving and changing.