How easily can you reach for your fear? What about your courage?
Whatever your fear is – how easy is it to FACE your fear?
We all know that overcoming fears – or at least becoming strong in courage – is a matter of regularly facing them head on.
Do you have to go to great lengths to ensure you don’t have to face your fear? Or is it right around the corner?
What if you were intentional about your approach to facing fears and building courage?
Make your fears and your courage easily accessible.
Find ways to organize yourself, your environment, or your peer group in a way that makes it easy for you to build courage to face your fears.
Make it easy to face your fear.
For example, wearing heels has been one of those things I have been trying to build courage with. I’ve gotten almost completely comfortable roaming the ladies section of clothing stores to look for new garments and styles – and sometimes shoes. Wearing many of those garments, when they fit in the grey area, has become easy. But there are still aspects of that ‘arena’ in my life that I still struggle with.
To make it easier to ‘reach for courage’ or ‘making it more accessible to face my fear,’ I put some of my shoes and certain garments in eye-sight. First of all: that required me to actually put it in a place that it could be seen by others (and it was, and that was a big fear at one point). Now, I don’t have to act on that fear/courage every single time – that’s not the point. Rather it’s to keep it in eyesight for me to see every time I walk out the door. “Maybe not today, shoes, but I see you.”
Keeping the fear and potential courage always within eyesight, keeps your mind processing it. It may not be today, maybe not this month – or hell, maybe not this year. But you’re thinking about it, and if you’re not – your subconscious is.
By putting it literally within arms reach will drastically reduce the amount of effort you have to go through to actually attempt to face that fear. Had I put those heels in a box, secretly hiding in my closet — what’s the chances I would have just opted to put them on for a quick minute? Not very high. But when they are literally on a shelf next to my door? Much easier to access and try, even if briefly.
And each moment of ‘trying,’ of ‘facing the fear,’ or ‘trying to build my courage muscle,’ is compounding. it adds up.
And that’s the goal: reducing the amount of effort it takes to try to increase the number of opportunities to build courage.
What’s your fear and how can you make it more accessible in your life?
