Being Queen of my castle: the spiritual art of not giving a sh*t

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Ange

‘The spiritual art of not giving a shit.’ Did you hear that? Outrageous!

Being gloriously yourself and not giving two hoots what other people think.

I just love that term. Don’t you? I wish I had made it up, but I didn’t.

I borrowed it from Havi Brooks and have been gleefully bandying it around ever since I read it on her blog, The Fluent Self, about a year ago. It sounds far more deliciously irreverent than much of the other dry psychology jargon floating around. You’ll probably hear me saying it a lot from now on It sorta rolls across the tongue and tastes delightful.

Anyhoo, on with the story.

I posted an image on a secret Facebook group page recently, and started getting curious about how many of us really do think it’s important to spend time actively pursuing our dreams.  So we all got to chatting, as you do late at night on secret Facebook groups, about the inherent ups and downs of dream chasing…

Then the BIG question hit, the one that I hear over and over again :

“What do you do when you’re getting all carried away by the thrills and joys of chasing your dreams/goals/objectives: YOU’VE FINALLY FOUND YOUR THING (whatever that may be), and you’re working your wee behind off to get there, only unfortunately, at least one other significant person in your life is NOT happy about the changes happening?”

‘What’s right about trying to reach our goals if the people around us don’t share our enthusiasm? Or worse! What if they are being downright unsupportive, negative and maybe even sabotaging our efforts to get a life we love?” Gulp.

Has that happened to you? You’ve just inched your way out of your cocoon and are ready to tentatively spread your colourful, but still very new, butterfly wings, while everyone else is still enjoying the chrysalis stage and wants to keep you as resolutely stuck to the leaf as they are.

So what to do?

Well, before you rush out and do something reckless like dump all of your friends, or (GULP!) drop your dream, it might be useful to take a step back, breathe, and simply give yourself permission to be who you are first.

Being truly and wholly who you are is the art of being sovereign.

It’s recognising your right, and allowing yourself that right, to be gorgeously, undeniably and unapologetically YOU. You with all your foibles, and you in all your brilliance.

You are the queen of your life. It’s about believing you have the right to own that life of yours and wear your crown with dignity, grace and courage. It’s your birthright. When you accept it, every one else will. And if they don’t, it probably won’t matter to you much anyway.

Wearing your crown means giving yourself permission to feel exactly what you feel at any given moment, whatever that may be: JOY, frustration, love… sadness….

Small children do it all the time. Not that I’m saying you should go out and act like a 3 year old (although I bet we’ve all seen a few ‘grown ups’ do that). Filters definitely come in handy in an adult world. What we’re talking about is more a deep recognition that whatever emotions you feel, are real, are very valid, and belong to you.

It’s knowing that you are only responsible for your own feelings, attitudes and actions but not for everyone else’s. It’s acknowledging that what others feel is equally as real, but inherently belongs to them. It’s their stuff. Totally legitimate. But not yours.

A great queen can feel deep empathy and compassion for another, without making their feelings hers. It’s about knowing where your edges are; where ‘you’ stop and ‘other’ begins.

It’s knowing your fundamental values.

It’s being clear, unapologetic and loving about what you stand for.

It’s about defining your limits and learning to say a firm but gracious (think Audrey Hepburn) NO to things that don’t support you, your values, or your personal goals in life. Thinking that you have to say ‘yes’ to everything in order to be liked, loved, accepted, ‘kind’ or ‘nice’ is a purely fear based notion that keeps you stagnant, smack bang in the centre of everyone else’s comfort zones.

Knowing when to say NO actually keeps your energy levels up and helps you be more generous with your giving.

Luckily, as queen you can also say a big, hearty YES to things that do support you.

It’s knowing that truly looking after yourself (including pursuing your dreams) isn’t selfish at all, because that’s how you can be fully present to and inspire others to do the same. Contrary to what we’re taught, compassion and care starts with self.

Having said that, looking after yourself does not mean that others are intrinsically less important. Au contraire, the more deeply you respect and allow your own freedom to be, the more natural it is to acknowledge and respect the needs of others, even if you personally can’t fulfill them at any given time.

You see, everyone gets to be queen or king of their own world.

A Monarch butterfly leaves its cocoon to test its wings when it has finished its metamorphosis. It doesn’t hang around in the chrysalis trying to make itself into something else, concentrate hard on remaining a caterpillar, or wonder whether it should ‘be nice’ and wait for the others. It instinctively knows its purpose in life, where it has to go, and what it has to do.

Every. single. one. of us, without exception, has our chance to become a metaphorical butterfly, each in our own way, and in our own time.
It’s what we are born to do!

So grab your crown and start getting a feel for those exhilarating wings…

Love,

Ange

P.S. Announcement time! With spring comes generosity, joy and abundance Early-bird discount registration has started for the Opening Doors workshop in September. Come along and learn some more about the ‘spiritual art of not giving a sh*t’ and get a good positive zing while you’re there.

You can find out all about it by clicking here. Not being a techy, I haven’t got an automatic secret code happening yet but I’m giving 100 €uros off the price of the workshop package, until May 3rd 2013. Click here and type in “YES PLEASE! I’d like to sign up and get the early bird discount in the message section.” There are only 10 spaces available.

Hope to see you in September.

Note to self: how do you find the time?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Ange

Crikey!! Here we all are a third of the way through February already. Did you notice that? It seems like yesterday that it was January 1st and yet a whole 42 days have whizzed by since then. Where has the time gone?

Actually, time has been on my mind a lot lately, or rather, how to be more productive with the time I have. Isn’t that just the question we all ask?

It’s this phrase that got me thinking:

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs etc…

Ouch! Tough love there. True. Realistic. But tough to admit never-the-less. The ‘not having enough time‘ and ‘this will never work – you don’t have what it takes‘ pirates have been launching vicious attacks from the grey areas around this topic and making me feel pretty lousy ever since I read it. Having my pirates launch an ongoing tirade about time, and me getting caught up in the dialogue is usually a clear sign that a) I could benefit from taking better care of myself (like getting more sleep no matter what else needs to be done) and b) it’s time to redefine my objectives and put them back into a more appropriate order.

If they can do it…

Having said that, if these inspirational people, and more, could accomplish their dreams within their life span, then logically you and I must be able to as well, without having to conform to someone else’s exact step by step formula. Seeing as we all have the same amount of hours in a day, the question is then, how can we make them work best for us?

Have you noticed that getting from here, where you are ‘now,’ to aaaaaaaaall the way over there where you want to be, doesn’t happen in one perfect straight line? Just getting from breakfast to dinner in one joyful piece can be fraught with pitfalls (trust me possums, I homeschool!), let alone walking the path to ‘success.’ Did you know that the people in that quote had the same difficulties too?

Getting some wise and helpful advice with a side of epiphanies

So a couple of weeks ago, hoping I could learn at least one heaven-opening-choir-of-angels-hallelujah hint that would improve both my state of mind and my productivity tenfold, I attended Havi’s live teleclass on time.

Thank God I did. It was full of brilliant ideas about understanding the concept of time and how we can better interact with it. This wasn’t your usual prioritize then tick off the boxes time management class at all. I’ve done a few of those and learned some valuable techniques. This class though, was different.

It was all about creating containers of time and leaving space around them. It was about cultivating pauses and the art of ‘being there when you’re there.’

Doing too much

For those of you who know me, this won’t come as a surprise, but for those who don’t…

…I regularly forget to leave spaces between events. I have a natural optimistic tendency to over fill my agenda until everything merges into one big jumble of activity that doesn’t always sort itself out as seamlessly as I’d like to imagine. Have you noticed that too?

Seriously – how many of us are struggling to find the time to ‘do it all?’ (Whatever ‘it all’ is!) How many of us are trying to fit ‘it all’ in while trying to strike a balance between work and home life, work/study and play, self and others? How often do we feel like we’re fighting a losing battle?

Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose but the wins can come at a cost of depletion ~~and/or increased inclinations to strangle the next person who asks you to do something,~~ and the losses only serve to reinforce those pirate voices telling us we’re insufficient, useless and incapable of organising ourselves out of a paper bag…which is of course not true.

Anyhoo – back to the class on time, but not exactly on time. As usual I raced breathlessly into the class after bowling the kids into bed and, wisely ignoring the dishes, skidding straight into my own lounge room sideways …

You know – Zen like!

Of course, things might have been different had I taken the time to read the pre-class advice Havi thoughtfully sent out a good week in advance:

“Give yourself 10 minutes before hand to relax and centre yourself, set up your space so you feel supported…”

Allow the time to prepare!

BINGO! That’s it! Allowing adequate preparation time. How often do you not allow adequate time for preparation, thinking that a particular task will only take a minute, until you realise that it’s actually taken up most of your head space all day, or that it’s effectively going to take 20 minutes to achieve rather than thirty seconds.

The concept I most loved about Havi’s class (and there were many pearls of wisdom throughout the hour on how to create each time container) was ALLOWING the necessary time for entry and exit.

Conscious entry/exit is about making deliberate transition space between ‘this job’ and ‘the next job.’ It’s also a concept my pirates love to denigrate as complete and utter frivolous, hippy BS. They groan on and on telling me to ‘just get on with things.’ Grumpy old buggers. I ignore them of course. Conscious entry makes everyone happy in the long run. It’s far more efficient than the usual ‘just getting on with it.’

Working with entry is all about recognising that our days, months, years are ordered by routine and allowing ourselves to flow with it optimally instead of constantly charging up against and bouncing off the boundaries.

Entry is clearly fostering the conditions for harmonious transition between one period and another, whether that takes the form of a change in task, a change in personal situation, a change from day to night even. It’s about making space through ritual and honouring the task you’re working on.

Making New Year’s resolutions (whether that’s your thing or not, personally I prefer defining one word) is one well known example of ‘entry’ that you’re probably pretty familiar with.

Here I am leaving 2012 – let’s go out with a bang! Here I am entering 2013 ~~grateful that the world didn’t end once again~~ so let’s make it fabulous!

Here’s another, more personal example of my own:

The passage from school holidays (when I gleefully work entirely on my own business) back into homeschooling (where I choose to juggle both teaching and business with as much glee as possible) is key for me.

I forget that EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Until it hits – and hurts!

This year I skidded out of the flurry of Christmas and New Year festivities smack bang into the first week ‘back at school’ under the typical delusion that my messmonsters were aboard, all hands on deck and full steam ahead, and that I was going to continue working on my business as if nothing had changed.

Yeah right! As I hurtled head first into a new homeschooling routine while trying to keep up ‘business as usual’ the messmonsters were still mentally in holiday mode and completely oblivious to the fact that school had even started back. And with the school inspector’s visit coming up… To cut a long story short, there were tears, door slamming, poor homeschooling motivation and NO business done!

Oops! Mega disconnect and Helloooo Pirates! Bleuch. General discomfort all round.

Conscious entry for me then might resemble this scenario: I organise my business schedule in advance so that the first week back at school is entirely dedicated to easing back into homeschooling. I put all of my time and attention into making this transition period smooth for everyone instead of listening to my pirates tell me that my business will go down the drain and that I really should get ‘it all’ done even if that means forcing myself to the brink of exhaustion. You and I both know that ‘it’ will quite simply never ‘all be done.’

So why create a container for time and adopt a clear entry strategy for each task? : stress reduction possums!!

Planning = Patience. Tolerance. No pushing. No fighting. No STRESS! Greater overall efficiency. No worries mate, smiles! You grow wings!

Everything flows more smoothly. All of a sudden it’s like time has expanded so we paradoxically end up getting more things than we could have possibly imagined doing, without all the rushing and panicking. With that comes a deeper knowing that there is always a ‘just right’ time for every task.

In my case, taking a week off the business to settle the family makes for smoother transitions and less time spent managing cranky emergencies. Regardless of what my fearful pirates say, I know I’ll make up the time on my business with double the energy, because the whole household will be running like clock work ~~in my dreams at least~~

So note to self:

Allow even more time for preparation (or Entry if you like that word better).
Include more time for setting up and creating the circumstances for success
Create more containers of time for each task and stick to them.
Remember to stop when it’s time to STOP (hard.hard.hard – but possible).
Cultivate the art of true, nourishing pause.
Create deliberate breathing spaces.

Do you have an entry or exit strategy for moving between the different parts that rhythm your life; a ritual that you have put in place that makes the passages smoother? Do you for example, – like changing into your jammies, or slide into your slippers when you come in after a long day at work to mark the passage between office and home? What are your techniques for creating ‘Entry?’ Do leave a comment to let me know.

Wishing you a great week

Love Ange

PS. If you’re wondering how to joyfully do away with with your own pirates (AKA your negative self beliefs and concepts) or looking for some practical techniques for making your life changes more positive, I might just be able to help. There are still some spots left in my Opening Doors workshops click here to find out more.

I dare you to enter the arena!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Ange

«It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. »

I just opened the front cover of Brené Brown’s latest book, «Daring Greatly» and this is what my eyes drank in. I haven’t had time to read even the first chapter yet unfortunately, but those words of Teddy’s, straight from a speech he made at the Sorbonne in 1910, both struck a chord and pretty well summed up my Saturday afternoon too. I’d say that’s Fortuitous Serendipity at its best !

You might have noticed that I’m on a bit of a roll with American presidents at the moment, first Abraham Lincoln, now Monsieur Roosevelt. So here’s a riddle for you : What do Theordore Roosevelt’s speech, ‘The Man in the Arena’ and an ice scating rink in south west France have in common ?

Seeing you’re a clever possum and the word ‘rink’ is a relatively passable synonym for ‘arena’ I’m betting you’re close to the mark.

Let me fill you in on the rest of the details. I haven’t ice skated in years even though I love it. Have you?

Missed my chance this time too, dismissing the idea of skating in favour of thinking (delusionally) that I was actually going to be efficient, perch myself up in the bleachers and write this blog post, only pausing every now and again to wave enthusiastically at the 5 messmonsters as they sped gaily past.

Things never quite work out the way we expect them to now, do they. Note to self: drop the expectations and prepare to be surprised!

Curiously, it wasn’t just the disco atmosphere, ~~non existent~~ low lighting (squint lines !!) and Gangnam Style music that changed my mind.

« The credit belongs to the man (or woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by cold, sweat and blood erm, ice; who strives valiantly, who errs… » You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you ?

It was fascinating! Can you imagine standing beside an arena sized petrie dish of human culture, positively bubbling over with triumph and defeat, persistance and daring, fear and excitement.

Children’s legs were flying in all directions in a chilly version of the chicken dance, punctuated intermittently with a few graceful swans gliding in and out, which only served to make the whole scene more endearingly comical.

Uncertain faces started out as taught as the bodies that carried them, etched with worried frowns which eventually relaxed into delight, then tentatively spread into shaky, but confident grins. Oh the delight ! Mine as much as theirs. I love delight!! Even the word is delightful! Really. It was glorious to watch

One of the most beautiful examples (literally and figuratively) was an exquisitely dressed, tall swan of a Moroccan woman who casually mentioned she was in Toulouse for two weeks holiday.

Seriously ? She gets my vote ! It’s brave enough coming to France in winter when most people here are fleeing to the Maroccan sun… let alone hitting the ice skating rink.

Clutching the barrier, she chirped nervously over the music that she’d never skated at all. Not even on roller skates. Not even as a child. Never. Smiling shyly she added that it had looked so fun on t.v. that she’d decided to give her only son the experience, as Dad watched on proudly from his wheelchair…

I observed the two of them valliantly scrape their way around the rink for more than an hour, joined from time to time by my own son who was also on his first discovery mission. Ahh the joy of being 8 and abandoned by your sisters !

She came back and we had another brief conversation about relaxing and fear of falling. ‘I fell,’ she said. ‘It hurt. But we are coming back to practice. We have a whole two weeks !’ Talk about dedication and commitment: overcoming fear of hurting herself, shame of looking like an ass in public, extra internal pirate attacks and cold all at once! *OMG. Sparkle points and Admiration (with a capital A) in bucket loads !!!*

It’s amazing what you observe when you play mad scientist next to a petrie dish of human culture. There’s enough evidence to prove that Essential Human Values are definitely alive and thriving at the local skating rink at least : Older kids helping younger ones, strangers helping other strangers, experts of all ages helping absolute beginners of all ages. Warm smiles. Encouragement, Tolerance, Faith, Joy, Glee, Solidarity, Celebration, Confidence and Exhilaration. Sigh! I~~t was much more fun than writing my blog!~~

The whole ‘everyday’ scene brought home just how easy it is to see bravery and daring in other people, outside of ourselves yet not in our own acts. Or to pick holes in both our own and other people’s efforts to grow, change and move forward rather than to value the small steps we make along the way, each one a moment of victory in itself.

Our pirates have a tendency to minimise or overlook the real courage it takes to accomplish every day acts like trying a new sport, starting a new business, speaking your truth or changing jobs, let alone rowing across the Pacific Ocean solo !

I have Brené’s (click on her name to go to her inspiring, thought provoking TED talk) book to read, and then there’s the book my dad gave me back when I was 12 called, ‘I Dare You!’ Think I’m going to dust it off, have another read through it and next time…

… next time 42 year old me is hiring a pair of skates ! Hang the damage this might do to my relationship with my 13 year old : I want to be part of the exhilaration ! ;-)

And you ? What have you dared to do recently that kindled a spark? Something you haven’t done in ages. Something you have been secretly wanting to do but holding yourself back from because of all sorts of internal pirate excuses…

Do let me know in the comments below! Or if not – promise me you’ll make a little private list of your own daring feats that you can go back to when you’re personally under pirate attack. It’ll be great ammunition

Yours swashbucklingly…

Ange

P.S. It’s nearly newsletter time and I’ll be sending out a personalised, introductory gift to those of you who have signed up. If you would like a hand made piece of positive just add your email under NEWZLETTER on the side bar on your right! (Sorry, I can’t put in a direct link for some mind boggling reason) before January 31st. That’s in 3 days… Do you dare ?

Expect Success

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Ange

“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and we shall find the way.”

Abraham Lincoln

Yesterday we had our annual visit with the ‘Inspecteurs de l’Education Nationale.’ In spite of the fact that the two hour ordeal actually went very well, splendidly even, it still threw me.

Let’s just say that my concept of ‘education’ (or *success* for that matter) isn’t quite as narrowly defined as the one currently upheld in France. Not that education in France is inherently bad, nothing is all bad. Obviously, it all depends on how you look at it.

But all the same, I reckon times have changed somewhat since the beginning of the industrial revolution and maybe that’s an indication that we could stretch our definitions of intelligence, education and success accordingly…
In any case, it seems a pity for any teenager to have to ‘prove’ his or her intelligence and language proficiency by reducing the work of Victor Hugo to the technicalities of conjunctions and subordinate clauses! I mean seriously? What happened to debating great ideas where meanings of words are analysed rather than in which order they should be placed?

I have lots more to ~~rant about~~ inspire you with on this matter but we’ll save it for Monday when I’ve got my head around it a bit more. The prison grey walls and lino corridors of yesterday’s government buildings have fogged up my thinking space.

Not to mention the fact that the meeting brought up so much stuff, that I’ve been incessantly fending off pirate attacks ever since.

This is what my pirates are assailing me with, ‘Are you sure you’re not going to ruin your children’s future?’ ‘What if you’ve got it completely screwed up and your daughter has to repeat 3 years of highschool to pass her baccalaureat and never speaks to you again.” “What if she never succeeds because you derailed her train and she never manages to get back on the same track as everybody else?” What if you’re WRONG?!” “What if THEY are RIGHT?!” “What if she never catches up?”

“What if…?” There was a lot of what iffery going on. Hardly surprising but generally unpleasant. That’s pirate speak for ya.

My response this morning was, as usual, to take it to the muddy tracks that dance me through the countryside, check what’s mine and what’s not mine, then get creative to attract some answers. Actually, I didn’t get creative. The messmonsters did as part of a brainwave coaching session that just popped into my head while running.

Out came the paints and we scoured all my books for the just the right inspiration to decorate the ~~kitchen~~ ‘classroom’ for the rest of the year. Eldest messmonster decided on this:

Expect success. Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and we shall find a way.

Rumour has it that these words were spoken by Abraham Lincoln, which I think is particularly ironic given that he succeeded in abolishing slavery in the United States.

Just sayin’. In the mean time pirates, my children are not behind we just do things in a different order. We read, write and discuss themes and ideas before we start dissecting clauses then shaking them to make sure there aren’t any loose bits. We also take a lot of time to ~~speak the Queen’s English as she is spoke~~ learn English because, well, it appears that it’s still in use in more than two countries around the world…

Take that, pirate darlings! Whatiffery taken care of

That’s it for tonight. In the mean time, until we catch up again next week, you too – Expect success!!

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Ange

Recently I’ve had many conversations with people around the subject of Fear, mostly with respect to personal projects and the big life choices that come with being a ‘grown up’ (perish the thought). So it seemed the ideal moment to bring it up here, this being my place to work through life’s bits and bobs.

What do I know about fear?

Fear is human, natural and normal as breathing. Natural? so’s arsenic!! Not particularly pleasant. Fear is everywhere in our society, particularly in the news, which I resolutely REFUSE to watch anymore. I’m protesting and boycotting!

Fear is particularly rampant in France but we’ll go into that some other time. Suffice to say that Fear is France’s middle name. Fear of ‘change,’ of ‘being wrong’ and of ‘losing what it’s got,’ amongst other things, is paralysing this wonderful country.

Paralysis is a common and particularly debilitating side-effect of fear.

I’m a born scaredy cat. I know fear well. We go back a long way and our relationship is constantly evolving. Damn! Just when I thought I’d overcome all my fears, or at least tamed them, they take on new shapes and forms. Fears can be shape shifters.

Sometimes fears are more ‘rational,’ and based on ‘realistic’ things like … well, all the horrors we see in the news that I refuse to watch. Did I tell you?

Sometimes fear is completely irrational yet it still feels so real. In any case, fear as I experience it, is always about the ‘possibility‘ of something unmentionable (humiliation, things going ‘wrong,’ dying in pain on a scrap heap) happening in the near or distant future.

Fear is practically never about right here and now.

It’s about perceived notions of what might happen.

As real as it feels, fear is always fuelled by the stories we tell ourselves, as Karen Thompson Walker says in her Ted Talk, What Fear can Teach us. Some of us, like moi for example, have very over-active imaginations and can really get caught up in the stories.

When I was little, I would hide my head under the covers to block out the monster’s face. The ostrich strategy – if I couldn’t see it, then it couldn’t see me – got me through many a nightmare of sharp, gnashing teeth over my bed. In retrospect, it obviously worked every time ’cause I lived to tell the tale.

Or I would employ the ‘braver-than-I-feel’ strategy to race past the ‘haunted bedroom’ in Nana’s house, then congratulate my shaking, sweaty self for getting to the ‘safe bedroom’ in one piece, praying I wouldn’t have to get up to use the loo in the middle of the night.

When I was in my late twenties, I bullied myself into bungee jumping to get over my fear of heights. Once at the bottom I laughed in great relief, with a newfound sense of freedom and lightness, only seconds after voicing grave concerns about being physically ill over all the people watching my big jump.

They were right though, you don’t have time to be sick. Seriously? I even wrote a goodbye letter (that I’ve judged unnecessary to show in order to maintain my reputation – whatever that is ) and a promise to myself that if I didn’t die, I would stop being scared of heights, of being followed, of disappearing in the dark…

So yeah, fear is intimately linked to the stories of doom, gloom and catastrophe that our ‘mind pirates’ like to tell us, but that doesn’t make it any less real. It’s definitely part of us all.. and needs to be treated and held as such.

What else do I know about fear?

The good stuff. That fear is the shadow of excitement. Beyond fear is flow. That overcoming, or better still, moving through and interacting with my fears leads me to a place of confidence, excitement, discovery, promise… and Life Energy.

When fear raises its head these days, it’s always a good indication to me that whatever new project or heart-led journey I’m about to embark on is spot on, right on track, and exactly what I should be doing. It also gives me a fabulous opportunity to learn, grow and check my orientation.

How to deal with fear?

Do you ignore it and carry on? Bust through it?? Stomp on it? Reason yourself out of it? They’re all tactics that have worked for me personally in the past. They were useful and sometimes necessary in situations where split second decisions had to be made: like the day I had to rappel down the snout of a glacier as blocks of it were dislodging around me… some days there isn’t too much time for interaction and questioning. You’re s*** scared and you just have to act.

What other ways can you deal with fear?

Be curious about it.

If Fear is part of me, then there’s something to be learned from it. I don’t want to cut it off. I want to find out more about it. Question it!

What am I really afraid of? Is it something tangible? Is it about now or left over from a past situation that was difficult for me? Is it the right time for me to be doing this project I’m doing? Is there something I can or should change about my idea, my project, my relationship, the way I approach my life?
There are threads to follow here possums that lead to unimaginable possibility. Sometimes a fear isn’t always so irrational, it’s a call to plan or strategise more effectively.

And sometimes it’s not. When your pirates get all over zealous and start ringing warning bells and making lots of dire threats, it’s most likely everything to do with that part of you that feels incredibly threatened by change and uncertainty. The part of you that feels small, fragile and vulnerable. Change means letting go of a part or sometimes all of what you already have. That’s not very reassuring most times.

The more comfortable you are, the more ‘custom fitted’ you are to your environment, the fiercer the Fear is bound to be when your heart whispers it’s time to make some sort of significant modification.

On the flip side of that is fabulously exhilarating, rewarding, life enhancing growth. Not to mention moments of twinkly, sparkly excitement.

Acknowledge your fear. Allow your vulnerable side to exist.

Talking yourself out of your fear and pretending it doesn’t exist is an option that works for a while. Did for me, and still does sometimes. Old habits die hard… However, unresolved fears have a nasty habit of resurfacing or shape shifting into looming shadows so I’ve started opting for the ‘understanding, compassionate approach’ with myself.

Be nice to yourself. Talk to that side of you who feels vulnerable. Hold it – allow your whole self to exist entirely if only for a minute. See what that vulnerable side of you needs. It might just be recognition. It might be reassurance. You’ll know more about it once you’ve taken the time to find out.

Talk about it.

Take it to someone you know and trust. Talking about fear distances you from it and reduces the hold it has on you – as long as you don’t take it to other irrationally fearful people that is. Nourishing fears is not what we’re talking about here.

Talking about it to someone safe and supportive takes some of the sting and well, scariness, out of it. So share your fear with your mirror, or your very best, sweet, supportive but level headed friend.

We all have fears. It’s part of the human condition. As are the stories we tell ourselves, that fuel them.

Your fear is a key to a number of different doors. Excitement and energy lie behind them. Don’t let fear stop you from doing what your heart most desires. Follow whatever will most nourish your soul.

Now, I fear now that if I don’t get to bed, I won’t function tomorrow.

Love to all – see you next week.