By the end of You Are a Badass, you’ll understand why you are how you a
re, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you don’t love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.
[bluebox]To fear or not to fear, that is the question.[/bluebox]
We’ve made being in fear a habit
We’re pumped full of it as children, like sugar, then as we grow we continue to take in the bad news on TV and the horror in the papers and the violence in books and films and video games and all this junk that fills us to the brim with fear about our world. We’re taught to play it safe and not take risks, and to caution everyone around us to follow suit.
And it’s become such an accepted part of our social conditioning that we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
For example, what would your immediate response be to someone you really loved and deeply cared about if they said, whilst sputtering with excitement, any of the following things to you:
- I’m taking out a gigantic loan to build my dream business.
- I’m going to travel around the world. For a year. By myself.
- I’m quitting my secure, full-time job to become an actor.
- I met the most incredible person last week and I’m totally in love. And we’re getting married.
- I’m going skydiving.
The Crab Effect
If you put a bunch of crabs in a bowl, and if, while they’re in there crawling all over each other, one of them tries to climb out, the rest of them will try to pull him back down instead of helping to push him out. No wonder they’re called crabs.
How you choose to go through life
Fear lives in the future. The feeling of being afraid is real, but the fear itself is all made up because it hasn’t even happened yet.
All it takes to turn the fear factor around is learning to be comfortable in, instead of terrified of, the unknown. And this is done through faith.
- Is your fear greater than your faith in the unknown (and yourself)?
- Or is your faith in the unknown (and yourself) greater than your fear?
There’s that incredible moment when you decide ‘screw it, I’m going for it’, and suddenly the thrill overtakes the fear. And then you’re flying on the magic carpet.
[bluebox] On the other side of your fear is your freedom.[/bluebox]
5 Helpful ways to navigate your way through the jungle of fear:
1. View fear from your rear view mirror
Think about some radical thing you did in the past that literally gave you the shakes it was so big and scary. And now look back on it–how terrifying is it now? Can you conjure up any scary feelings about it? Even a weensy twinge of fear?
Keep this in mind as you face each new challenge: No matter how intimidating your next great leap forward seems at the moment, it will be a pipsqueak when you look back on it someday.
So why wait? Why not look at it through pipsqueak colored glasses right now?
Envision your challenges from the future, look back on them from a place of victory, and they will lose much of their power to paralyze you.
2. Be in the moment
Is anything scary happening to you right now at this very moment? Right now, where you’re sitting, is anything bad actually happening or is it just the thoughts in your head that are freaking you out?
You deplete the much-needed energy you need to kick ass by freaking out before something even happens.
Instead, stay in the moment and connect to your higher self.
3. Cut off the stream of crap
Be more conscious of the information you absorb. What blogs do you read? What shows do you watch? What books do you read? What stories do you read in the paper? What movies do you go to? Whose opinion do you ask? What do you focus on in your day-to-day life?
This isn’t about being in denial or out of touch with what’s going on in the world, it’s about how much of this information you really need.
Are you staring at a car accident or are you gathering information that will allow you to contribute to positive change?
4. Don’t think of anything upsetting in bed at night
Our minds turn into gigantic magnifying glasses that make all our fears 100 percent bigger when we’re lying there as a captive audience at 3 a.m. in bed with nothing to distruct us. Unless you’re going to get out of bed right then and there and take some sort of action, don’t waste your precious time thinking about your problems.
Use your meditative powers to move troubling thoughts out of your mind; focus on relaxing every single muscle in your body one by one, slowly and intentionally, so that it takes up all the room in your brain that you were using to freak out with.
5. Love yourself
And you will be invencible.
R
elated reading:
Complement You Are a Badass with What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything
