Are You Letting Hidden Fear Control Your Life?

For a large chunk of history, people put dragons on maps. These dragons represented both the mystery and the potential danger of the unknown. Yet despite their presence, we pushed out and explored. We removed the dragons from the map and took control of the mystery.

My Dragons

Recently I was thinking about these dragons and how they relate to my life.

For a long time, there were many aspects of my life that remained hidden in the realm of dragons. Whenever I thought about my fears, my emotions, or my dreams I’d get scared.

I knew there was more to life than what I was seeing, but I didn’t know what that was. And so, instead of looking for a different path, I continued to wander the same well worn rut over and over. I remained stuck for years, dating the same women, taking the same jobs, and making the same mistakes again and again.

Sound familiar?

Off the Path

Then something changed. Something shoved me off my path and forced me into a part of myself I didn’t know. And I discovered it wasn’t as scary as I thought. And so, I started going deeper. I started exploring all the parts of myself that had remained hidden. I began replacing my dragons with the lines and landscapes of a map.

And while this map still had cliffs and pits, at least I knew where they were. This meant that sometimes I could avoid them and even when I didn’t, I could usually find my way out. This taught me one simple truth: Awareness gives you the power to slay dragons.

It’s easy to think you are lacking some skill or technique you need to change. But in reality all you need to change, your life is the willingness to open your eyes and look.

Here are a few things awareness has taught me:

The Truth About Fear

Sometimes you avoid facing your fears because they seem TOO BIG. But because darkness obscures the size of things, it’s hard to know the truth.

Your fears might be BIG, they might not. The best way to find out is to get to know your fears. If they are big then you can get help to facing them. And if not you can learn to face them on your own.

How to Take Responsibility:

We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of. But when you do something wrong guilt and fear not only weigh you down, they can prevent you from taking responsibility.

But if instead of hiding your mistakes you own them and make amends, you can learn valuable lessons and improve your level of trust with yourself as well as others.

How to Be Confident:

It can be embarrassing to admit you’re afraid or that you have doubts. But when you reveal your secret fears, not only will people understand they’ll often admit to sharing some of the same misgivings.

This will help you feel less alone and encourage you to be who you really are.

Tame Your Fears

I’ve met a lot of people with hidden dragons. Usually they hide in some corner of their lives for years preventing these amazing people from being everything they could be. These dragons keep them from taking risks, from going after their dreams, and from being themselves.

A lot of the work I do with clients is around finding these hidden places and shedding some light on them. And I’m amazed again and again how the simple act of bringing something into awareness creates huge change in these stuck places.

I’ve seen people lose 40+ lbs of weight, escape old karmic patterns with their parents, take on new challenges, and achieve great clarity in their lives. Every time it happens it feels like magic to me.

The Challenge

Which is why I want to issue you a challenge to make this year, your year of facing dragons.

Stop avoiding those parts of your life that you’d prefer to avoid. Make the difficult phone call, leave the boring job, put on your shoes, and head out the door.

What you face will be unexpected, but it’ll be worth it. Don’t let dragons control your life. My dragons controlled me for far to long. And the longer you wait the more powerful they become.

Slay your dragons while their young. Face your fears. And be willing to look at your life with an unflinching gaze. If you do you won’t regret it.

Dragon Slayers for Hire

Of course slaying dragons on your own can be hard, so I want to give you some help.

As many of you know in about one week I’ll be launching my 30 day Happiness Challenge and the first Phase is all about Awareness: how to create it, how to practice it, and how to use it to generate lasting happiness and change your life.

  • If you want to pay attention to your life, so that you can overcome your fears.
  • If you want to make awareness a daily habit, so that you can understand yourself better and be more confident.
  • If you want to learn how to use awareness to do something that matters with your life, so that you can create lasting happiness for yourself and the world.

You should consider Signing Up.

Over 100 people have already signed up for the challenge and I’d love if joined this movement. I’ve designed the challenge to teach you everything I’ve learned about creating happiness in 30 bite-sized bits that you can understand and put into action.

When you’re ready to slay some dragons with us you can SIGN UP HERE

 


Photo By i k o