How to Overcome Fear That Clouds Your Thinking

(and holds you back from your highest good)

Question: How do you know when a conscious—or subconscious—fear is in play?

Answer: When you hold yourself back in any way, shape, or form from knowing or expressing what’s in your heart of hearts.

Question: How do you overcome fear?

Answer: Keep reading. I’m going to share something even BETTER than overcoming fear.

Sometimes fear roars like a hungry lion and you cower in the corner, convinced it’s going to eat you alive. Other times it only growls. You might justify it doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist. Or stomp on it like you’re trying to put out a fire before it starts raging and burns down the house.

Regardless of the size and shape of fear, the prevailing thought in the world is the ONLY WAY to handle it is to OVERCOME it. Plow through it with sheer willpower.

That couldn’t be further from the truth! That’s our Inner Critics trying to protect us from imagined harm by trying to stay in control.

At some point, though, it’s going to be time to take that bold step into the unknown realm where fear doesn’t limit you.

When stepping into the unknown, we all experience some kind of fear— conscious or unconscious. Fight or flight is written in our human DNA from back when dinosaurs and other beasts saw us as good sources of protein. Kill or be killed became a cultural norm in many ways. With so many war zones in the world today, and terrorism touted in the nightly news, our DNA hasn’t had much of a chance to ascend into higher realms. It has evolved more than it has ascended, and our imaginations are adept at creating danger where danger doesn’t exist.

So it’s up to us with our free choice to overcome fear by ascending our own consciousness instead of waiting for our DNA to do it for us. When we ascend, our DNA will catch up and ascend with us.

On my end,I didn’t even think about the concept of how to overcome fear until someone said something  to me in passing. It was back in 1988. I was young. At the time, the novelty of it shot my eyebrows up so high, it raised my hairline by two inches. When it sunk in, my whole body relaxed. It was so obvious!

Little illuminations are like that. The key is to put them into practice so they become big ones. That’s when the juicy stuff starts happening.

“This,” I thought, “is worth contemplating.”

So I wrote it down as a small  personal illumination in my notebook at the time.

This is true whether you’re building a business or growing a relationship, leading others or sitting quietly on the sidelines.

Before that insight hit me smack between the eyes, I was filled with fear. Of course, I wasn’t willing to admit it to save my life.

“Who me? Fear?” I would’ve laughed and flicked my hand as if to throw it off. “Nah! No way! Besides…even if I do… it isn’t affecting me.”

But it was. At the time, I was working hard at building a business that wasn’t my first love. Why? Because I was afraid of going for what I truly wanted.

Then I read a research study by Duke University about the effects of subconscious fears that we didn’t consciously know existed.

Say what???

At first, I was indignant. Outraged. My subconscious could hold me back? In my mind, it wasn’t fair. I wasn’t going to be a victim to that!

The Light Warrior in me wanted to take the bull by the horns, ride it like a wild bronco. Do something about it. Not let fear own me.

That was my fear of being manipulated doing the talking.

You’ve got to love the irony. My fear of being manipulated was manipulating me. Big time.

Like it or not…

When you accept that even subconscious fears affect and limit your behavior, you’re well on the road to new freedom.

What I didn’t know was how, once I took it on board, it would open up a treasure trove of new illuminations, and infinite waves of Divine Light.

I would eventually learn to use them to manifest richer life experiences than I could’ve possibly imagined from my old way of thinking. Despite all odds, I transitioned into what I really wanted and even won awards for it in the process.

Back to you…

There a two main avenues you can take to overcome fear.  

1. You can try to overcome it. That’s the more unenlightened way, and takes a pot load of energy for limited results.
2. Or you can transform it. That’s the enlightened way and will open up doorways to new horizons of creativity and emotional freedom.

Keep this in mind:

Fear alerts you to the danger of falling over the edge of a cliff. That’s a good thing.

But when fear creates the illusion of danger that you can fall over a metaphorical cliff—and you act as if it were real—that’s not-so-good.

You have two choices at that point:

1. Let the fear limit you and hold you back or…

2. Look at the message the fear is trying to convey.

Naturally, we all have moments in which we’re more enlightened. However, there are other moments when the growth opportunity comes in loud and clear… but we ignore it anyway.

Let’s look at the difference between the unenlightened and enlightened way to deal with fear.

Where do you recognize yourself in these examples?

YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE in how you handle fear when it arises. Use a more enlightened approach and let it pave the way to a deeper understanding of how powerful you truly are.