About Feeling Fearful: The Three Principles & You! [Steve M Nash]

“Fear is okay, you are okay”

Introduction

This page will attempt to help you with questions like: What do I do about feeling fearful? What should I think about it, and what does it mean? (Quick answer: fearfulness just means you’re alive. Your fear might close you down, limit your life, or you might use your fear to drive you on to greater and greater things. Hey, it’s one of those ebb and flow gigs, really…)

Another three minute guide to a common thought/feeling (a la The 3 Principles).

My Thoughts About Feeling Fearful

Feel the fear and do it anyway?

Don’t you just love self-help. The encouraging mantras, the Nike “Just do it!” moments, the simplicity of it all.

So, feel the fear. Just do it anyway. And you can stop reading now… (Or, if you happen not to be called Susan Jeffers, Richard Branson or Philip Petite you can keep reading, it’s up to you.)

So, my name is Steve M Nash and I’ve been shut down by fear on many, many occasions:

I’ve missed out on many opportunities to speak to someone new, someone I was attracted to, because I was too frightened to approach her

I’ve stopped speaking my truth (as it appeared to me in the moment) because I was too frightened of the response I might receive

I still don’t share my gift as loudly and brightly as I might, despite my encouragements for dear readers (like you) to do just that

BUT… But sometimes I act, too.

Sometimes I act first, and then think later, or I think and ignore what I’m thinking

Yes, I could take less notice of my fearfulness, I could – my unnecessary concern for how things turn out – but that’s okay, it really is. Ever since discovering (and deepening) the Inside-Out understanding I’ve found that beating myself up over my ‘mistakes’ really doesn’t help me, really doesn’t encourage me to be less fearful.

I’m fearful, I’m Fearless – it’s a grand, grand dance with life, and the people I meet in it, and I love it, love it all.

I feel the fear (nothing more than the feeling of a fearful thought).

I do it, sometimes. And sometimes I don’t.
Anyway…

About Feeling Fearful – The Inside-Out Understanding

Feel the fear and do it anyway?

Yes, if you can, yes. And if you can’t – if the feeling of your thinking overwhelms you, feels too real – well that’s okay, too, it really is.

But please understand, it’s not what you’re thinking about that’s causing you the problem, it’s what you’re thinking (via the Principles of Thought). Yup, as my mentor Michael Neill so wisely put it once,

We’re not afraid of what we think we are afraid of… we are afraid of what we think.

This really is an Inside-Out understanding of how we experience life. Every problem we ever have – getting the girl, getting the gig, giving of ourselves fully… – all reduces down to a simple question:

How comfortable am I with my experience of myself?

Returning to one of my personal examples, then. I’m not frightened of approaching the woman I don’t know and talking to her, I’m frightened of how I might feel in this interaction. And the more I see that, the more I realise that I have nothing to fear, ever. Life becomes moment-by-living-moment easy, simple, and fun. (Really.)

Fear is just another psychological experience of life that we have somehow misunderstood, and made wrong. Fear is excitement made wrong. Your fear proves you are living life as you are meant to – a continual embrace of the unknown.

Phew, That’s All That FEAR Is Then!…

Congratulations, then, and pats on the back all round.

Phew, and here’s you thinking there might be yet another book for you to have to read, have to understand, another version of yourself you might have to compare yourself badly against.

Make no mistakes, Fearless-ness is a truer experience of life. But this is just feeling the fear, and deciding to listen (to ‘move’) to your wisdom, instead – deciding that this fear is simply feedback that you’re alive, playing the game, and nothing else.

I’ve lived by fear. And I’ve lived by wisdom. And wisdom wins every time.

One of the real joys of transformative coaching is steering people towards their wisdom, and away from their fear. Not that their fearful feelings are wrong, they’re not, but you don’t have to listen to (and act on) them.