Fear is a monster. It sets out to destroy your beliefs, cripple your faith, and make you feel like you’re stuck in place. Often, I find myself feeding my fear with my own insecurities: “Maybe I’m not smart enough…” and “It’s not gonna work out, that’s outside of my depth”. But, the older I get the more I realize,

The main thing separating people from their dreams and goals are their fears of even starting to pursue them.

Life is short and really you get ONE good shot at. That thing you want to see manifested in your life isn’t going to just happen. You have to work for it, go for it. You can’t let fear stop you.

Recently in my life, I’ve been pursuing A LOT of new things. I’ve been trying get my first “real” business (A candle company — more deets on that in later posts) started up, break into a new and engaging career path, learn new programming languages, and basically just doing a ton of things that I’m not immediately good at. That strikes fear into me. I HATE not being at good at things immediately. The act of struggling to grasp something makes me fearful and I start to doubt myself. I’ve been working through conquering my fears in that space, and just being more in love with the journey that is Life and growth in general. I’ve had to, because everything I want is on the other side of my fears.

As cliché as it sounds, every journey in life does begin with a single step. Never let your fear keep your from starting or even continuing your journey.

Here are some of my quick and *hopefully* easy tips for managing fear and anxiety as it pertains to your life and performance:

• Just Do It, like NIKE forreal
  • This is the hardest tip on this list, it’s not easy to imagine putting yourself into situations that are scary on purpose. However, if you never try, you’ll never know what to expect and you’ll always be scared. On the other hand, if you just do it, you’ll see that what you thought was going to be awful, scary or hard is really not that bad at all.
• Relax your mind
  • Doing things that relax me always helps me to manage my perspective of the thing(s) that are scaring me. When I’m at peace, I’m not so freaked…just a thought.
• Write out your thoughts
  • This one might not be for everyone but writing is my thing. Write down your goals and what you think it will take to accomplish them. Anything on that lists that scares you is 1. Big enough (I’m a firm believer that if your goals aren’t a little scary they aren’t big enough) and 2. Probably just something that falls out of your established comfort zone. Break the fearful steps down into little milestones and start knocking them out. You got this! <3
• Talk it out with family or friends
  • Your friends and family know you best and tend to understand your fears in way that is personal. I’ve found that sharing my anxieties with my mom and some of my friends has definitely allowed me to gain different perspectives and honestly just feels like a warm hug.

Now, back to living life not quite fearlessly but definitely more empowered 🙂