I am SO excited about 2016! This year will bring a lot of expansion and opportunity to go to your next level in every area of your life, how fun does that sound?
And this is all amazing, however, there can be one thing that can stop you from this being your reality this year: FEAR.
I have a story about fear that happened to me right on January 1st.
My husband and I went to visit our dearest friends in Maine and we experienced the first winter snow storm while there. So we decided to go skiing, and it was so beautiful.
This was my first ski trip since 2007, so you could say I was a bit rusty.
However, the day before I went cross country skiing and I did awesome, which supported my confidence and made me feel like going down the mountain was going to be a piece of cake.
Can you guess what happened? The mountain was generously high. When I got off the ski lift and got ready to go, my legs started to shake and I heard a voice inside: “Why didn’t you stay at the bottom to practice first?” I knew this voice, it was the voice of fear.
At that point, I had no choice, I had to go down…
My husband tried to coach me through but I told him I was fine, I wanted to do it on my own…how many times we get caught up in this trap as women?
Talk about receiving…I was definitely NOT in receiving mode.
So I went down, slowly, and I was doing fine.…until, there was a very steep slope and I went for it. Half way through I started to go so fast that I lost control and I got “wicked” scared, as the “Mainers” would say and I ended up throwing myself to the ground, hurting my shoulder.
I was so scared I didn’t know what else to do.
As I was laying on the snow with my skies all over the place I said to myself: “If you stop now, you will never, ever ski again.”
The second time, I allowed myself to receive the support of my husband who grew up skiing in New England and I slowly started learning a new way of positioning my body which made skiing easier and better, not to mention more fun!
You would think I would know to say yes to receiving right away, however, when fear kicks in, we can find ourselves reacting, instead of responding, from our primal believes.
What’s the moral of the story?
If you give your power to the fear, it will paralyze you, trap you and most importantly, you will miss all the fun that life has to offer.
I could have easily chosen to go down the mountain the very first time and go back to the cabin to drink hot cocoa next to the fire place (one of my favorite things to do) for the rest of the day.
However, I would have miss receiving the beauty and the confidence of breaking through my fear.
The truth is that anything new that we embark on will bring up fear. This is why I wanted to share this with you as you start this new year.
When you allow yourself to turn fear into excitement, you are gifting yourself an immense gift, the beauty of claiming your own self and your power, doesn’t this excite you when you read it?
It brings me chills!
How to turn fear into excitement:
I worked with a coach once who taught me that whenever fear would show up, the first thing you need to do is to run the whole tape through in your head.
This is what I literally did when I was laying in the snow….
It’s a very simple exercise, all you need to do is:
1) Call out the fear. Write it down or say it our loud and allow yourself to feel it.
2) Once you do this, ask yourself the following question: “And then what would happen if (name the fear)?”
3) Write down or feel the answer
4) Then ask the same question again: And then what would happen if (name the fear)?
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you feel you can’t go any further.
You will see that at the end of the day, you most likely find a very irrational answer that doesn’t make any sense or has no logic in your present reality.
The whole point of this exercise is that you have a conversation with fear and give yourself the permission to be in charge, and not the other way around.
I’d love to hear what transpires for you when you do this exercise.
Now that you know how to turn fear into excitement, I can’t wait to witness all of your desires becoming a reality.
Remember: YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE!
With so much love and beauty,
