Feeling Fear

Welcome Back me!

It’s been some time since I’ve blogged, life just happened to get in the way and took me in a different direction. But I am back and more focused than ever on what I want to achieve in different areas of my life.

For some time I have felt a little lost, I had dreams and goals that I just wasn’t reaching. Something was going wrong. That something was my brain. It was getting in the way of everything I was doing. I’d go for a run and suddenly my thoughts would say “You can’t do this! What makes you think you can?”

And I would give up.

It wasn’t just my running that was affected. It was any goal that I strove for. I wanted to start my own business but my head got in the way before I even started.  I went back to full time work, not because I wanted to, but it felt safe and secure. Rather than taking the chance and putting myself out there, my mind got in the way and I gave up on that goal, too.

I have been doing a lot of reading and meditating and inner soul searching in the last few weeks. Life sent me a curve ball and I am back at home for at least the next five months so I have had time to take a look at my life again. In one guided meditation I was doing the subject of fear came up. It simply jumped into my mind, seemingly from out of nowhere, and I realized that fear has had an enormous role in how I have lived for a very long time. Like my running, I give up on things out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of what people will think, fear of any number of things. It has had a huge effect on me.

But a few days later, I found a concept that I had heard about before, the concept that you are not your thoughts or your feelings. You are the watcher of your thoughts and feelings, they are not you. So while I may be scared of a variety of things in life, it does not make me “scared”. I am just feeling scared. The fear is just a feeling.

Soon after, I received a phone call that pushed all my buttons and I was left feeling anxious and full of fear. However, I was able to identify that I felt scared and anxious, but those feelings were not me. Rachel was still there, calm and together, the fear and anxiety were there for me to look at, to watch, to observe in an unattached way. It was like I was actually watching my thoughts and feelings circle in my mind, but they were not me. I was ok.

Since this realization, I feel like a weight has lifted off my shoulders. I no longer have to be a slave to my thoughts and feelings. They are not me. I don’t have to act on my fear anymore, and this opens up a world of possibilities for me.

Give it a go and see if it works for you, too.

Rachel x