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Fear. 

 

It can be a beast when you have something new and great in your heart to do. For myself personally, I have allowed fear to hold me back way too many times in my life. I can even share that my fear to do something brilliant, but perhaps out of the norm, has been a HUGE reason of why I’ve been stuck in my life at various times. 

 

Now, underneath the fear could be a whole set of insecurities, doubts, and what if’s. However our emotions are described, if fear is involved then we can name fear as the main instigator. Our brains work real hard to keep us safe and comfortable, and anything we want to do that is different or has risk to it, we quickly hear our brains giving us a plethora of reasons why we should not do it. 

 

But we have something stronger within us then just our brains at work, we have a will. Our will can and has surpassed our brains alerting us to danger. I mean, just think of a time when you were young, where you knew the danger of doing such and such, and yet, you still did it anyways. 

 

We maybe can sum that up as us just being immature, but you have to admit we had more courage back then. We saw the world as ours to conquer, until the world brought us hurt and pain. Now, to convince ourselves to do anything out of the box takes more guts and courage than we ever needed in our lives. 

 

When I was grappling with starting this business, I spent a lot of time going back and forth in my head of why I should and why I should not start it. The truth was that I was afraid to step into who I knew I was meant to be. I had enough experience, enough skills, but for two years I refused to budge. 

 

Why was this? Well, fear, insecurities, and not believing what I knew to be true about myself. I saw myself through skewed lenses, and admit openly, that I still put up a fight with seeing myself this way. 

 

The truth is I know myself. I know my weaknesses and my strengths. I know my insecurities and self-doubts. And I know that I struggle immensely with “not being good enough”, and measuring myself up against others and thinking for some strange reason that they are better.

 

But the greater truth is that everyone is exactly like this. All of us have an understanding of our weaknesses and strengths, our own feelings that we don’t measure up, and our issues with comparing ourselves way too much with others. In short, we are all humans who grapple with fear on the daily. 

 

Moving past that daily dose of fear, ignoring it as we should, and stepping into a life that we desperately want for ourselves can be possible. 

 

How is it possible, you ask? Well, for starters recognizing that you are not alone in your fear of moving out of being stuck. There are plenty of people that find themselves in the same boat. What can differentiate us from them, is making a choice by our will, to move past the fear into action.

 

Fear will not entirely go away, and when we come to that understanding in our lives, then we can move towards working around it instead of against it. And to do this we have to begin to believe truths about ourselves that scream louder than our fears.

 

Before the New Year decided to poke it’s head over the horizon, promising us all a new decade, more resolutions, and emotions of disbelief that another year is upon us, I was deep in thought over why I felt stuck with something.

 

I had made some decisions earlier in the month that I wanted to start specific new projects and continue working on existing ones, but something inside of me was stirring. This stirring was real and raw and yet, I couldn’t get it to surface.

 

I had a few ideas of what was trying to peak it’s way through in my heart, but each time I thought I knew what it was, the stirring continued communicating to me that I was not getting it. I was stuck and that produced some great anxiety within me. When you are about turn 40 and you know you are supposed to be doing something, but you have not figured it out yet, you feel time is no longer friendly and you need to hurry up and piece it all together.

 

A lot of this anxiety and fear comes from comparing ourselves to others that are doing or making the impact we want to make and yet, they are light years ahead of us (or so it feels), and some even younger than ourselves. It strikes a chord deep inside that we need to hurry and run after the dreams we once had, but because of life, we got sidetracked.

 

This was me a few months ago. I was stuck and super anxious that I was not a young twenty year old who had plenty of time to make decisions and be okay with making mistakes and changing one’s mind. We had plenty of time back then.

 

But then I learned and realized, just because I am turning 40 this new year, does not mean that I am running out of time to achieve the things my heart wants to achieve. I DO have time. If I would just stop comparing my journey with someone else’s and be content with where I am at in my life, then the anxiety and fear will melt away.

 

 

Now, all of this does not answer how we get unstuck in our lives, but it does help to calm us down when we are. Life is unpredictable, we don’t know how long we will remain here on this earth, but we can continue to pursue goals and dreams for ourselves at any age. Sometimes when we compare ourselves and our journey with those around us, it can cause us to become stuck.

 

Sometimes when we believe certain lies about ourselves or our circumstances, that too can be the reason we feel stuck. In order for us to become unstuck we need to first explore what caused us to be stuck in the first place and then work from there.

 

For me, I was stuck because I was not choosing to pursue what I knew deep inside of me I really wanted to pursue. I wanted to do something safe, comfortable, and risk free. Having that mindset, however, kept me stuck. It was holding me back from what I knew I wanted to be and do.

 

And when I finally allowed myself to pursue “the thing” that I was afraid to admit that I wanted to pursue, all of a sudden I was no longer stuck.

 

So what does this mean for you? If you feel stuck I encourage you to explore why and to be super honest with yourself about that why. Do not compare yourself with others and set yourself free from the limitations we put on ourselves as a culture and pursue what you really want to do. I give you the permission you need to do so!