Week Ninety-Seven: Overcoming Small Fears - Success!

Last week, I again visited the friends who live with a four-footed friend they describe as “laughter disguised as a dog” and asked about the progress in resolving their dog’s fear of coming down the wood stairs. My friends reported that, to their surprise, one day she just did it – she just came down the stairs and discovered that she was okay. No one knows how she arrived at the decision to risk confronting her fear, but now it’s as though there never had been a problem. Without the restriction of the stairs, she can race around the entire house and her bursts of energy are free to bounce off any walls she chooses. She also has the option, now, to freely follow her human companions wherever they go in the house, rather than having to wait to be carried down the stairs. As I heard about her success, I was moved by how she released herself from the prison of her fear and can now be more of her whole self. Part of her enthusiasm was constantly restrained when fear was in the driver’s seat. Now, she can be fully herself, which is a beautiful gift to all concerned.

Hearing about this success, I again felt so moved by how we hold ourselves back by the restrictions we place on ourselves in the name of fear and how we short-circuit spontaneous moments of self-expression in order to feel safe. Then my mind went to the many fears most of us actually do overcome all the time – and how these successes may pass unnoticed. I think of the many times I’ve listened to clients describe significant changes in their behavior or beliefs and then discovered that they hadn’t consciously registered the fact that they had actually succeeded in shifting away from some old fear.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to think about fears you’ve overcome, fears you’ve successfully tucked away in the “I used to be afraid of” file. One of mine – and this was a big fear, rather than a small one – is how I used to be so afraid of public speaking. That fear wore me out for many years, until it dissolved, over time, as I worked to move beyond it. Overcoming fear requires us to be willing to take a risk – big or small – to expose ourselves to something that we are convinced will hurt us in some way. Somewhere, somehow, we’ve all taken at least one risk to shift beyond something we feared. I remember a friend telling me, years ago, about how afraid she was to tell a friend he had hurt her feelings. I also remember hearing about how liberated and empowered she felt when she was finally able to take the risk of sharing her true feelings.

As you do this week’s experiment, allow yourself to identify fears, large or small, that no longer rule your life and take a moment to acknowledge how your life has changed now that the fear no longer jumps into the foreground of your experience. Choose things that used to create discomfort, anxiety, or downright panic, things that you now do without thinking much about them. You may have momentary flickers of discomfort in the presence of an old fear, but notice the ones that really don’t cause you much difficulty anymore, even when they do briefly create a small blip on the screen of your experience. We all have these successes, so give yourself permission to find and acknowledge some of yours.

Fear is fear, and when we’re in its grip, it feels big, even if we recognize it as being a “small” fear. Be sure to celebrate yourself for whatever successes you recall, because it takes courage to move through any fear and come out on the other side. There’s a saying about courage that goes something like this: To have courage means to move ahead even though we are afraid. Each and every one of us has been courageous in this way at some time or another in our lives. Give yourself the gift of recognizing those places where you have confronted fear and come out the other side.

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