Feeling Fear without Making it Mean Something

Episode 25

Not making our feelings mean something

Hello There and Thank you for joining me today on Episode 25! Today we are going to be talking about the importance of feeling our emotions AND not making them mean something that just isn’t true. Oftentimes our brain has programmed us that if we feel fear, failure, or hesitation it is a “sign” that we are making the wrong decision.

This could be anything, it could be about ending a relationship, changing careers, telling someone no, doing anything that is out of our typical behavior or off our current path. It could be about making investments in yourself.

This could be anything that you choose to do and after you feel a feeling. For me it was my decision to change careers from being a Teacher to being a Life Coach. I had so much fear around am I making the right decision, will I make enough money, and if I have fear it must be because I am making the wrong decision. But guess what that just isn’t true.

We often take feelings as a “sign” - a sign if we are doing something right or wrong, if we made the right choice or not- We put all this weight on feelings and give them so much power. Instead of taking feelings to mean that we just had a thought. Feelings are a sign that we had a thought.

Our brain oftentimes gives us thoughts that 1) are not true 2) that are not helpful 3) that are just automatic.

So we have to start to learn to pay attention to when we are giving our feelings more power and less review, we need to review our feelings and see what thought caused these feelings. Instead of just believing our feelings to be true.

What if you feel fear, because you are doing something new- does that fear always mean that you are doing something wrong or that you made the wrong choice? No fear is just a sensation in your body letting you know you had a thought.

What if the ultimate goal was to learn to feel fear, instead of taking action out of fear and away from something new? What if the ultimate goal was to go toward something new AND feel the fear at the same time.

What if fear was just a sensation in our body and it didn’t mean anything has actually gone wrong. What if it was our job to learn to feel our feelings of fear and manage our thoughts about our fear AND go toward our goals.

What if fear of failure was okay. What if you could have the fear of failure AND still take scary steps towards becoming successful. What if the only path to success was cemented with failure and it was our job to learn to feel the sensations of failure without making it mean we weren’t good enough or we weren’t doing it right?

what if fear wasn’t a signal that something has gone wrong, but just a signal that you had a thought that needs some investigation.

What if feeling fear during uncertainty was okay AND you didn’t need to make uncertainty mean that you are making the wrong decision.

What if all this fear - is just your brain's way of keeping you safe from uncomfortable emotions that come with letting go, moving forward or moving on? What if you learned to feel fear and let it be a normal human emotion that you sometimes feel.

Our feelings are created by our thoughts. So go and check your thoughts. Ask yourself, is this thought even true? What if this thought wasn’t true?

Managing our mind and our life comes with learning how to feel any feeling as sensations in our body and not making it mean anything about our value, our worth or our potential. Feelings are just sensations in our body, they are just a signal that we had a thought.

It’s your job to go look over that thought with curiosity and ask how is this thought serving me? Is it keeping me quote “safe” is it keeping my brain safe by keeping me in old patterns?