Embracing the F-Word

Fear isn’t an excuse to come to a standstill. It’s the impetus to step up and strike.  ~Arthur Ashe

It’s time to embrace our Fear, in love and in business.

Quit brushing it under the rug pretending it’s not there.

Stare at it in its face.

What do you see?

Take an honest look.

The worst thing we can do is lie to ourselves.

If we are not thriving in business or in our relationships, something is awry.

Get real, get honest, and figure it out.

If any bit of fear is present, which it likely is, my advice is to embrace it.

Here’s why:

When you look away from something as powerful as fear, it doesn’t necessarily leave.

You can’t just pretend it’s not there.  Certainly that might work for some time, but eventually, it will get you, unless you use it for your best interest.

Here’s how:

Again, get honest with yourself.  What’s your experience in your relationship?

Do you find you’re frustrated all of the time?  Are you constantly snapping, feeling like you’re the only one making an effort, or feeling unheard?

Sure, that’s frustrating.  But what’s underneath that frustration?

My bet:  the F-Word.

If you’re feeling unheard, unseen or unsupported in your relationship on a regular basis, it would only make sense that you’d have fear that your partner really wouldn’t be there for you when you actually needed him.

So you hold back from really putting yourself into your relationship, and it suffers as a result.

You may have other fears as well:  Maybe he just doesn’t care?  Maybe he’s using you?  Maybe he’s settling for you?

I’ve heard them all.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your relationship:

is to slow down, and get a real felt sense of your true, raw experience underneath your surface emotions.

I’ll bet you’ll find the F-Word lurking in the mix.

And what about your business?

You just updated your website and it seems like everything possibly is going wrong?

You hired a new team player and everything they produce looks like garbage?

When things feel off in your business, what’s your experience?

Probably frustration, exhaustion, feeling drained…(if you’re anything like me…)

But peek under the hood:

There it is:  the F-Word

Fear that perhaps your project will fall through, that you’ll humiliate yourself in some way, that you’ll have to work 80 hours a week for the rest of your life…or worse, that at some point, your whole business will just collapse and be unsustainable.

So what do you do then?

Embrace the fear.

See, to overcome the fear, you can’t look away from it and pretend it’s not there, but you have to move through it.

The good thing about emotions is that they exist to be fluid and to move – so if we just step into our own fear for a second, we are naturally going to find our way out of it.

And, as Arthur Ashe states in the quote at the top, fear is the impetus to step up and strike.

Love that quote.

Here’s how to embrace your fear and use it to your advantage, to step up and strike:

In love, be honest with yourself and your partner about it.  And then get a reality check.

When things are quiet with your partner and the tension is at its minimum, let your partner know from a real, honest, vulnerable and raw place about your fears.  Ask him if your fears are substantiated.

Let him know (and again, from a vulnerable place, not an angry one), “When you forget to take the garbage out after I told you how important that is to me,” (I know, seemingly trivial, but it’s the little things that can really get this Fear monster going) “I start to worry if I’ll ever be able to count on you, and I start to feel like maybe you don’t even care about me.  Is that true?”

Have an honest conversation.

This type of genuine dialogue will only strengthen your relationship and bring the two of you closer together.

In business, be honest with yourself about it.  And then get a reality check.

Should you really be worried that your business is about to crumble because of a few broken links on your newly designed website?  Or is that just fear running away with this catastrophic possibility?

Use your fear as an impetus to step up and strike.

I’m not saying to dwell in the fear, that will serve no one, but embrace it.

Let yourself move through your fear, and let it move you to step up and strike, by playing bigger & bolder in love, business and life.

How can you embrace the F-Word?

What are you really afraid of and how can you successfully move through that – or how have you successfully moved through that if you are on the other side of fear?

Please leave your comments below!  I’m excited to hear from you.

Cheers to moving through fear, and thriving in business and love,