29. Befriend Your Fear

Imagine this: you are standing on the edge of your dreams, but fear is pulling you back. It's cloaked in discomfort, uncertainty, and whispers of inadequacy. But what if we could turn this seemingly daunting adversary into an ally?

We begin by unraveling the "four Ds of fear," helping you recognize these subtle barriers that keep you from reaching your full potential. Then we'll talk about examples of successful people who played the game with fear and emerged victorious.

You can let fear in the car, but don't let it drive.

So ... buckle in and take charge of fear and let it fuel your dreams!

What You'll Learn From this Episode:

• How consistent small actions can lead to significant achievements.

• How fear stands as a natural part of the journey towards success.

• What it means to shift from a state of contraction to expansion.

• A four-step process of befriending your fear and using it as fuel for action.

• Why having a clear vision and strong purpose is the way to overcome fear and achieve your dreams.

   

Featured on the Episode:

• Jim Fortin
• Mary Morrissey
• Brooke Castillo
• Ep 28. Being a Visionary Woman

If you want to find out more about how coaching with me will help you get in touch with your dreams and start living them, here are some resources for you.

Book a Free Strategy Call  Click here to book a call with me

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Full Episode Transcript:

📍 You're listening to The Success Minded Woman with Deidrea Kiesling, episode 29, Befriending Your Fear. This is a good one, so stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you're a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you're in the right place. I'm here to help you make the money and the impact you've been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that and post your syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you're ready to create a life and business you love, then let's go. I'm so glad you're here.

Today is all about befriending your fear, making friends with your fear and not making your fear mean anything about you or your dreams when you are going after your dreams and goals, you have to do it afraid, and fear doesn't mean anything about the possibility of your dreams and goals.

Fear is normal and expected in your journey to success and fear is a qualifier and most people don't pass. Most people let fear tell them that what they want is not possible, that they don't have what it takes or that now is not a good time. But I know you, my beautiful listeners, that you are willing to face your fears and keep going.

And in this episode, I'm going to give you some tools on how to do that, and this is so important, I really can't stress this enough. You can't wait until you're not afraid. That will be too late. So, what you need to do and what I'm going to tell you how to do is befriend your fears, make friends with it, let it in, welcome it, and know that it's a sign and signal of growth.

So, there's five things that I'm going to share with you today about befriending your fear. And then at the end, I'm going to share a process that will help you to learn from your fear and get into feeling tone of an energetic state that will help you take action. So, the main thing that I want to tell you about today is number one, fear as a prerequisite for success, fear and failure are always.

Not maybe, always going to come up when you're going after your goals and dreams. And I'm going to share with you all the ways that fear shows up. And then I'm going to talk about why we have fear and why it's normal. And then number four, about what it means about you, about your dreams, about all of us.

And then I'm going to give you some examples of some people that have faced their fear and overcome their fear as inspiration that you can do it. And then I'm going to give you some tools and a process that you can use when you are feeling the fear and how to get out of it. So, point number one, fear and failure are prerequisites for achieving your dreams.

It's not maybe certain that when you are going for your dreams and goals, you will be afraid and what successful people do, and most other people don't is that they know that fear is along for the ride. But they don't let fear mean anything about the dreams that they are building, and they don't wait until they don't feel the fear.

They just do it afraid, and I heard this saying and I love it. “Fear is in the car, but don't let it drive”. And that is one of the ways that you can be friends with your fear. You know that it will be there, and you can bring it along, but don't let it drive. So, the second point that I want to share with you is all the ways that fears shows up in our lives because it can be tricky.

But one of the things to really notice is, are you feeling contraction or constriction? Are you feeling some type of like pulling in? Fear is the opposite of expansion. So, when you're feeling contraction is when you're in fear. And this often comes up in the form of doubt, worry, anxiety, imposter syndrome, which is a big one for success minded woman, and I'm going to do a whole episode on that one next week.

It deserves its own episode. I know for me and all of my clients, this is a really big one. Another one is fear of success, fear of failure. And fear of failure of it not working out, but the reasons why you can't be or do or have what you want when you give yourself all those reasons you can fill in the blank with whatever reason comes up, that is fear all those reasons or things that you say you can't do because of something.

That's all fear, and fear sometimes just shows up in really sneaky ways, and so you have to be onto yourself when these show up, and there's four main ways that these show up, so I like to call these the four D's, so they all start with a D. So, number one is distraction, so that is when we allow ourselves to be distracted, so that is when maybe you're sitting down.

For example, if I'm sitting down to do my podcast and all of a sudden, I think it's really important for me to go run that errand that's on my list of things to do, or maybe for you, you're starting to do something. Maybe you're going to start an exercise routine and then maybe it's cold that day and then you decide to go do something else instead.

Distraction is a big one for a lot of us these days because we have so many ways to be distracted. Going on your phone, being on social media, checking your emails, all the things that you do instead of doing what you said you're going to do in that moment, instead of going after your dream or, you know, doing something in the moment that you had planned for or that you want to do for your goals and dreams.

So, there's lots of ways that we can distract ourselves and a lot of them. We don't even notice it. So, we really have to be onto ourselves about that. So, for me, a lot of times I get distracted with not giving myself focus time to really sit in the seat at my desk and just work through until I get something done.

So, you can start learning about yourself and when you get into distraction, but. You know, notice the things that are really like the main ways that you get distracted. It could be going on social media, it could be going to do some laundry, clean the house, run an errand, just things that seem sometimes they seem productive and legitimate, but they really are taking you away from what you should be doing.

Even what you told yourself you would be doing another way that fear shows up. The second D is delay. So, this is when we just put something on hold, or we delay doing it. And this is. Where we really start giving ourselves reasons, excuses, justifications. I like to call them alibis. The reasons why now's not a good time.

Let me wait until the weekend, till the end of the month, till next year, till it's summer, until it's back to school, all the sneaky ways that we delay going after our dreams and goals. So, you really need to be onto yourself about that because I heard Jim Fortin say, “later means never and tomorrow never comes”.

And what that means is that you have to do it now. And so, you really need to be onto yourself about delay. The 3rd D is dissuasion. And so, this is when you get dissuaded discouraged from going after your dreams and goals. This is when maybe you dissuade yourself, you talk to yourself, you gather evidence and start building a case for yourself about why you can't do this, why this isn't possible for you, why now is not a good time.

So, all the different ways that we can dissuade ourselves, dissuasion can also come from other people, other people can. tell you either in their words or sometimes just in their sort of demeanor and maybe how they're receiving. If you're saying something, they can dissuade you about that's not possible for you.

Or they might say things like, are you sure that you can do that? How do you know? Or You know, just different things where they're trying to dissuade you and really, it's usually coming from a very sincere place of being concerned for you or not wanting you to fail or not wanting you to have a hard time.

But a lot of times they just don't believe it's possible for you. And that's one of the reasons why I tell all of my clients and to the women that come to my workshops is when you have a vision, especially when it's new, when you have a new dream or vision, you want to keep it safe. You want to guard it.

So, you don't want to share it with a lot of people. In the beginning, because first you really need to build the belief in yourself so that you cannot be dissuaded from other people. And another way to guard against dissuasion is to create a support structure. I like to call it partner in believing some person or group of people that will support you and will hold the belief of the possibility of your dream even when you don't believe it yourself.

And then the fourth D is DEFCON one. So, that is high alert. DEFCON one is like the highest, like security warning system that we can have in the country. So, it's just high alert. You know, all systems basically are offline and going crazy. And this is really a physiological state of overwhelm.

This is when we are in our stress response of fear, flight, freeze, fawn, we're in. We really are in a physiological state of stress. And so, when you're in any of those four Ds, especially the fourth one, DEFCON, you have to have some skills to move yourself out of these ways that fear shows up. And so, I'll get to those at the end of the episode.

So, the third point that I want to talk about is why we have fear. So, fear is a way of holding you back, of keeping you safe. But what I want you to know is that nothing has gone wrong here, and fear doesn't mean anything about you and your dreams. Just know this, you are human. And you have a human brain, and our brain is designed to keep us safe.

The primitive part of our brain, the oldest part of our brain that we had as we evolved as humans is designed to keep us safe. It is sometimes called the pleasure center of our brain. And it's really about our survival. And so, I like to call it the motivational triad because there's three pieces to it to seek pleasure, to avoid pain, and to conserve energy, to be as efficient as possible.

And of course, this worked perfectly for humans when we were living in caves, when we had to be on the lookout for danger and the fear response, this stress response. Kept us safe. It kept us looking for danger on the lookout for danger. But in our modern world, this motivational triad of the pleasure center of seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, conserving energy in our modern world, this is our comfort zone.

This is how we stay in the status quo of our life. This is doing all the things that we feel comfortable in. And by definition, our dreams and goals are not inside our comfort zone. So, to leave your comfort zone, you have to be uncomfortable and Brooke Castillo at The Life Coach School, where I got my life coach certification says this quote, which is absolutely one of my favorite quotes.

And it's “This discomfort is the currency of your dreams, everything you want for yourself, your big dreams and goals are by definition, not in your comfort zone”. And how do we know that? It's because you don't have it yet. If you had it in your life right now. It would be in your comfort zone, and our comfort zone is going to change as we grow.

As we start achieving our goals and dreams, we will start creating a different comfort zone. And then, and that is how we grow. And that is how we keep moving. But first, you have to really understand that your brain is trying to keep you safe. Keep you in your comfort zone and there is nothing wrong with you.

Your fear doesn't mean anything about the possibility of your dreams. It's just your brain. So, I like the saying of nothing's gone wrong here. Your brain is doing its job. So here are some examples of people who felt the fear, who moved themselves out of discomfort and didn't make the fear mean anything about them.

So, the first one is you and me and all of us, when we were toddlers, first starting to walk. We learn to walk by falling down and all of us as toddlers learning to walk. We faced our fear. We fell down. We got up. We fell down. We got up. None of us said, well, that's it. I just won't be a walker. No, of course.

I know that's silly, but it's a very powerful metaphor to go after your dreams. And when you're a toddler, your big goal is to be a walker. And so, here are some other examples of some famous people that believed in the power of their vision, and we're not dissuaded by what other people told them about the possibility of their dreams.

So, Oprah Winfrey was fired by TV executives because she was quote, not fit for TV. Bruce Springsteen was fired from his first band because they told him he couldn't sing. And Jack Canfield, who co-authored the series of books called Chicken Soup for the Soul, his proposal for his first book in the series was rejected 144 times.

Imagine if he had stopped at 143 times, but he kept going, and all of these people kept going because they believed in their vision. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for lacking imagination. J. K. Rowling, who we all know as the author of the Harry Potter series, which is the largest, most successful book in all the related things that came out of that, including theme parks and movies and television shows.

She was rejected 12 times, that original manuscript. So, all these examples, they all have something in common, which is they believed in themselves. They believed in the possibility of who they are and what they are capable of creating. They had a vision of the life of their dreams and who they wanted to be.

And they did not let the outward signs and signals, their current conditions or circumstances in their life or the rejection that they received, none of it. They felt the fear and did it anyway. So how do you actually do that? Feel the fear and do it anyways. There are two parts to this. One is the fuel that drives you, and this is having a crystal-clear vision that aligns with your core values, which means you have a powerful purpose.

The reason you are going after your dream, it's your why is what inspires you to keep going, to take action in spite of the circumstances in your life, in spite of all the maybe evidence of why it's not working or why you can't do it. When your why, your purpose, your reason is big enough. it will pull you.

The vision is your power and your fuel that drives your actions. So that's one part of it. And then the second part is the actual skill to manage the fear, to notice it and all its tricky ways. It shows up to allow the fear and remind yourself that it's a good thing. It just means that you're growing.

You're getting to the edge of the comfort zone and you're going out of your comfort zone. It's just a sign and signal of growth. And there is an actual skill and a tool set that you can use to manage your fear and to remind yourself to keep going. So, you know you're feeling fear when you feel some type of contraction.

It's the opposite of feeling expansive. It's feeling like being in scarcity versus feeling being in abundance and I talked about this in last week's episode when I talked about vision driven thinking that you always want to be making decisions and taking action from a place of expansion and possibility and part of befriending your fear is to really notice it and name it.

And just like when you make a new friend, you get to know them, all their quirks and their little personality things, what they like, what they don't like, you know, are they a morning person? Do they drink coffee? Or do they drink Diet Coke? Or, you know, whatever the things you're learning when you make a new friend and when you're befriending your fear.

You're getting to know it; you're getting to know how it shows up in your life and remember that it wants to keep you safe. Its job is to be a dream stealer, to be a dream squasher. So, this process I'm going to walk you through is a way that you can befriend your fear and remember. You can have fear as a long for the right, it's in the car, but it's not driving.

So, here is the process that I have used, and I've been teaching it to my clients, and I think it will help you too. So, this is a four-step process. So, step one is to notice it. Where in my body is this? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? And this is really, you can notice these four D's that I talked about.

Distraction, delay, dissuasion, and DEFCON. So, that is how you can notice it. Notice what behaviors and how you're thinking and feeling. So, once you notice it, Name it. Then you want to shift your energy. So, when you're noticing it, when you're noticing it in your body, or when you're noticing your thoughts and feelings, you're in some kind of contraction, you're in some kind of pulling in and withdrawing.

And that is what the fear is. So, the second step in this process is to shift your energy from contraction into expansion. And one of the best ways you can do that is to shift, slow your body down to take some deep breaths so you can take some deep breaths. You can slowly breathe in through your nose and out slowly through your mouth like you're blowing through a straw.

And this will help you move out of your primitive brain out of the fight, flight, freeze state and into your prefrontal cortex, the thinking center, the logical part of your brain. And then you can think about one thing that you're grateful for and one thing that you're proud of and that shifts your energy into expansion into gratitude, which is on the frequency of abundance, which is by definition is not fear.

And so, remind yourself that your dreams are possible, and that fear is normal. It's your brain just trying to keep you safe. So that's step three to remind yourself. And then step four, which goes along with step three of reminding yourself is pick a go to phrase or a mantra that you can use to remind yourself.

And I gave you a lot of different examples in last week's episode where I talked about life changing phrases and the reason, they're life changing because they get you out of fear. And so, you can just pick a few that you can say to yourself and when you're in fear, that is a good place to use them.

And one of the main ones that I use these days is this is what it looks like when it's all coming together to just remind myself, oh, yeah, this is fear. It's along for the ride. It means I'm getting out of my comfort zone. And this is just what it looks like. When it's all coming together. So, those are the four steps of the process to get out of fear.

But another kind of bonus step, if you have more time, you can do this. Or if you need more support, if you're in a really intense state of overwhelm at that DEFCON one, you can listen to a meditation. So, you do your breathing and then you can listen to a meditation. Put your headphones on and have some go to meditations on your phone or an app or whatever you want to use and then just.

Listen to that and allow that to calm yourself down. And I actually just did this this morning. I woke up in the middle of the night so anxious I couldn't sleep. And then I got more anxious thinking about all the things I had to do today. And now I'm not sleeping and then I'll be more tired and how I'm going to get everything done.

And then I remind myself. I notice my fear. I calm myself down. I get into a more calming, energetic state. I remind myself that this is normal. This is okay. And then when I did this morning is I listened to a meditation. So, that helped me calm myself down. And once I'm calm from listening to the meditation, I can tell myself, when I wake up, I will have plenty of energy. I have plenty of time to do what I need to do.

And all of that just helps me get calm. And I do this four-step process daily and sometimes multiple times a day, but pretty much daily, because when I first wake up. Almost every day I wake up feeling anxious and my mentor, Mary Morsi says that she doesn't get out of bed.

She doesn't put her feet on the floor until she gets into a state of gratitude. And so, I've been doing that more and more. Wait, when I wake up, I notice my anxiety. I go through this process. I get into an energetic state of gratitude. And then I get out of bed, and it's really helped me a lot and so I hope that this support process and these tips and tricks and tools will help you too, because you can't be in fear and gratitude at the same time.

So, by developing this skill and discipline of taking responsibility for moving your fear and shifting your energy. Another tool that you can use is to use your journal to get out of your head and get it onto paper. And here are some journal questions that you can use. What am I afraid of? What type of fear is this?

Doubt, worry, anxiety could be about money or your job or your kids, but you want to put a name on it to get specific and this will help to begin to neutralize it. You can ask yourself; what percent is the likelihood that this will happen? What can I learn from this? What can I do differently? What is my backup plan?

What can I do with what I have that will move me in the direction of my dream in the next five minutes? In the next five hours in the next five days, all of this will calm your brain and get your executive functioning, bring back on board and get you into action because action moves the energy and action creates your goals and dreams.

And I heard this saying once that action is where the action is. So, all of this, you want to calm yourself down, get out of fear so that you can move out of your comfort zone with action. And so, as we wrap this episode up, I want to remind you that this is a process of growing and developing and going after your goals and dreams.

And there's going to be plateaus and you want there to be plateaus. You don't want to be constantly pushing yourself out of your comfort zone all the time because that can lead to burnout when you're just beginning. Pushing, pushing, pushing. So, I love the idea of having plateaus. So, you, you know, you push for a while and then you kind of settle, you know, settle into that new comfort zone and then you might do another push and then you kind of settle so you can figure out what that looks like for you.

But I love this idea of like climbing Mount Everest. They have base camps. So, they push, you know, they go on part of it, and they get to a base camp where they adjust to the new altitude. They rig tools and get their new provisions. And then they go up to the next level, to the next base camp. And then they stop and rest and get adjusted to the altitude and get their provisions set up and go again.

And so, think about your going after your goals and dreams like that. You're going up. Just think about it like Mount Everest and there's going to be base camps along the way. There's going to be support. There's going to be provisions. There's going to be base camps where you rest and provision and get the support for yourself.

And so, one of the things that I heard is that. You can climb all the way up to Mount Everest, baby steps, baby steps can take you all the way up and baby steps can take you all the way to your dreams and goals, but you have to keep going. You have to keep getting out of your comfort zone and you have to befriend your fear.

That's what I have for you today. So, befriend your fear today, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast, and you want to know more, then head on over to www.thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week. Bye.