“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
Do you ever feel like it would be soooo easy to achieve all your goals and create the life and business of your dreams … if you could just get out of your own way?
I've been coaching smart, talented, and creative women for the past three years as a health and fitness (and now life!) coach, and whenever I ask a new client what holds her back, 95% of the time the answer is either:
(A) Some variation of “myself”
(B) “Not enough time" ...which is the same as “myself” since time management >> priorities >> our relationship with ourselves.
Yup, it's official. We are WAY too hard on ourselves.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you could stop being your own worst enemy and start being your own best friend and advocate? If you could stop letting your inner critic or fear block you from taking action, making a life pivot, or simply being happy and fulfilled?
Maybe you'd set harder boundaries.
Maybe you'd say "no" more often.
Maybe you'd spend less time around the people who leave you feeling exhausted/insecure/pissed off.
Maybe you would spend less time hustling and more time working on passion projects that may or may not be income-producing.
Maybe you'd leave the job, the relationship, move out of the city that's draining your energy.
Maybe... you'd figure out who you actually are??
We live in a world that’s constantly telling us to do more, be more, achieve more, and earn more, NOT TO MENTION the load of work, volunteering, family, friends, self care that we already have on our plates, so it’s easy to start believing that we aren’t good enough, which is a complete LIE that's keeping women trapped under our own glass ceilings.
I believe that learning how to face our fears with patience and compassion is the most radical and powerful action we can take if we really want to work towards female empowerment.
Ultimately, it's about taking ownership of our inner confidence, happiness, and the direction of our lives instead of living on autopilot or in reaction mode.
Choosing to decide that we are enough, just as we are, no matter what the world or media or our inner critic might say.
Over the past three years I’ve been on a quest of self discovery, absorbing all the personal development I can get my hands on so I can "find my potential," create my dream life/career, and overcome my self doubt and anxieties.
- I’ve worked with life coaches and energy healers.
- Taught myself how to meditate.
- Cut caffeine.
- Quit the birth control pill to heal my hormones.
- Made regular workouts and eating healthy my default lifestyle.
- Started going to yoga.
- I journal everyday.
And you know what?
That last part is the key.
Because through a regular journaling habit where I literally just brain dump stream-of-conscious crap that’s in my head, I’m able to dig deeper into what is really going on.
And I’m also able to go back and see where I was at and what I was struggling with years ago.
I recently noticed that even though I’m literally building my DREAM life all around me and am working through all my self doubts, insecurities, and “issues," I still stress out about the exact same things I always have.
Fear of failure.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of success.
Fear of nobody liking me or wanting to work with me.
Fear of being misunderstood.
Money stress.
Overwhelm because I want to do ALLTHETHINGS and I'm a perfectionist.
Every day anxieties that all revolve around the fear of not being good enough.
I can meditate the stress away, diffuse oils, clear my chakras, numb out with wine, psychoanalyze myself and understand exactly why I still struggle with this stuff, but at the end of the day these are fundamental human fears and they aren't ever going away.
WAYS THAT FEAR MANIFESTS IN YOUR LIFE AND BUSINESS
- Imposter syndrome or feeling like a fraud
- Overthinking
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Overwhelm
- Perfectionism
- Procrastination
- Comparisonitis
- FOMO
- Never feeling good enough
- Never feeling like you’re quite there yet…
- Burn out
- Working too much
- Emotional eating
- Sabotaging yourself when you start to see success
- Being self critical
- Judging yourself or other women
- “Mommy guilt”
- Guilt even if you don’t have kids
- Social media addiction
- Chronic fatigue or exhaustion
- Over exercising
- Body image hang-ups
- Obsession with planning, but failure to execute or follow through
- Need for control
- Feeling like a failure if you miss a goal
- Inability to earn money from your business
- “Procrastistudying” -- signing up for alllll the courses and webinars
- Scarcity mindset -- feeling like there’s not enough money/clients
- Not being able to relax or have downtime
The list is endless!
We’re always trying to escape or avoid our fear, stress, overwhelm, anxiety, (insert all negative emotions) and get to the other side.
But what IS on the other side of fear?
There’s a lot of hype these days around learning how to find alignment and flow, which seems to be the opposite of fear.
“Flow” is this mystical state of being where we can eliminate stress and hustle and turn our days into a smooth lazy river, trusting that everything we need and want is coming our way through law of attraction and that the universe has our back.
"Choose love over fear!" the experts proclaim.
Does this actually work? Maybe. At least we'll feel more calm.
But at the end of the day, fear will always pop back up, because it's part of our biological design. We can't ever completely overcome it!
What I’m discovering is that fear itself actually isn’t the problem. It’s how we perceive it.
And flow is actually not an absence of stress or fear, but simply allowing ourselves to experience and process ALL our emotions. Because if we try to numb or ignore the emotions we label as “bad,” we are also numbing ourselves to experiencing joy, abundance, love, and all the good ones too.
What would happen if we simply accepted our feelings, good and bad, without placing a judgement on ourselves?
If we stopped spending all our energy over-thinking, over-planning, trying to fix ourselves … and just decided to show up as ourselves for who we are IN THIS MOMENT?
My hypothesis is that life, business, earning money, and simply being ourselves would all be a heck of a lot easier and more fun if we chose to accept that fear is just a part of being human, not something that's out to get us.
When we stop making a big deal out of our fear, it will fade into the background and become part of the kaleidoscope of emotions that we experience on a normal daily basis, and that's when we can find our flow.
So instead of “feel the fear and do it anyway,” how about just “feel the fear and do it?"
Let’s stop trying to get to the other side, and just live our lives!
This process is not something that’s theoretical or mindset-based. You can read my blog and nod your head, but at the end of the day this is something that has to be physically experienced.
SO!!!
Wanna go there with me?
I’ve created a 3 day group program/mastermind/adventure called Fear & Flow, for courageous entrepreneurs or sensitive overachievers who are ready to dig deep and explore these topics with me!
I’m sharing some of my favorite journal prompts to get you digging deep, feeling your feels, and figuring out what “fear” and “flow” feel like to YOU, in your body.
We’ll also have a daily Facebook Live discussion and a group video call where we’ll come together and mastermind how to find the sweet spot or balance between fear/love, scarcity/abundance, hustle/flow in our own lives.
I want to bring together a small group of visionary women who are passionate about breaking out of our own self-imposed limitations and living a bolder, bigger, more passion driven life, because sometimes we just need someone to talk with about this crazy deep stuff! And I’ve discovered it’s so much fun to come together in community and mirror back each others’ light when we can’t see it ourselves.
If you want to join us, you can learn more here!
NOTE: registration for this round of Fear & Flow has closed, but make sure to join my mailing list to be the first to know when I relaunch!
xo Anna
