What holds most of us back from achieving our goals and dreams in our lives is fear. Fear of the unknown, of failure, of rejection, and even of success itself, because of a fear of the responsibilities that success would bring. Even though we might do our very best to bring about the things that we really want, we never get them. Why not? Because of our fears.
Here’s some tips to help you recognize your fears and then get them out of the way, so that they can stop interfering with what you really want.
Understanding the whole package
First, imagine that what you want to have in your life is already in your life. Instead of thinking about it happening in the future, imagine that you’re currently living it. Take a few minutes to imagine it and make it as real as possible.
If your intention is to have a nice house, then imagine living in it, right now. How does it feel? What are you doing in your new house? What are people saying to you now that you’ve got your new house? Take a few minutes to make this as real as possible. Imagine the smells, the colours, and the feelings.
Now consider the side effects of having your ‘dream house’. How will it affect your health, finances, relationships, career and spiritual practices? How do others treat you now that you have it? In what ways does having it change you or those around you? Everything that changes causes changes around it, so try to imagine how having your new house causes change around you and even within you.
Don’t make it idealistic, as that defeats the purpose of this exercise. Instead, imagine the most realistic scenarios you possibly can. Include what you know of the people around you, your health, your career, your finances, etc. How will you having your new house impact upon them? Everything we want to have in our life carries with it a lot of side effects, which we often fail to take into account.
If you spend at least 10 minutes doing this exercise, you’ll quickly understand what else may result from achieving your desires. If the side effects of actually achieving your desires are unrealistic, then your intentions will fail, because deep down you know they’re not going to happen.
To achieve our intentions in life, we need to understand and accept everything about them.
Discovering the fears that sabotage our intentions
When you start considering the side effects of your intentions, you’ll notice some resistance. Some parts of what you visualise will seem fantastic, while others will be less than desirable. As an example, if your intention is to manifest that new house of your dreams even though you know that your spouse hates the kind of house you want, then you’re going to feel some resistance about achieving it. This is because you want the house, but you don’t want the side effects.
Anything undesirable that comes up in your considerations is a pointer to your fears. That’s what you need to look at.
Using the example of a spouse that won’t like your dream house, we can see that it’s a fear of how you think they might react that could hold you back from achieving it. Even though you want the house with all your heart and soul, in the back of your mind might be the fear that your spouse is just going to hate it, and the consequences of that would be undesirable for you.
It’s the fear of undesirable consequences that holds you back from achieving your desires, creating an internal conflict that results in you achieving nothing.
As you mentally explore the possible side effects of achieving your desires, make sure you note down those side effects that you resist, or which cause negative feelings in you. Anything that comes up as a possible negative aspect of achieving what you want in your life should be written down in a list. Write it down! This is so you have something substantial that you can work with over time, and which you won’t forget.
It only needs one fear to keep you from achieving your intentions and your goals. Understanding what your fears are is an important step in moving past them and actually making achievements in your life.
Learning acceptance
In order to achieve the desires we have, we need to eliminate the fears that conflict with intentions behind the desires. When those fears are gone, the intentions will have nothing stopping them from being achieved. But if you don’t address the fears, then it doesn’t matter how much visualization you do or strength of will you have, you simply won’t be able to achieve what you want.
One of the simplest ways of addressing your fears is to accept your fears. Turn the fears into a consequence and accept them as part of your life.
For example, if you accept that your spouse isn’t going to like the house of your dreams, but at least it’s much better than what you have now, then you’ve turned the fear into a consequence. The consequence of you living in your dream house is that it will be better than what you’re in now, and your wife will probably appreciate (eventually?) that it’s better than what you have.
A fear is an outcome you resist, while a consequence is an outcome you accept.
When you fear some of the side effects or consequences of actually achieving a desire, then you are effectively resisting the desire. There is a subconscious intention for you to to NOT achieve the desire, but if you can turn your fear into an acceptance instead, then that can allow you to actually achieve your desire and finally have it in your life.
If you aren’t ready to accept those consequences, then you aren’t ready to achieve those desires.
Work on each of your fears one by one, by acknowledging them as fears and then accepting them as consequences. Make a list and slowly work through that list, one by one. They might not be consequences that actually occur in your life, but if you accept them instead of resisting them, then you can create positive attitudes about them that will replace the fear.
The process of doing this does require a lot of very deep self-analysis, which might take some time. Don’t expect overnight results. However, in order to move past those fears which are holding you back from achieving your desires, you do need to engage in these exercises.
Achieve what you want in your life by dealing with your fears. You’ll never regret it.
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