Ten steps to understand and transform your fears and reveal your potential.
By: Jose Antonio Morales
Tags: Freelancing, Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Fear Of Failure, Fear

You can listen the audio version while reading :)

I want to share with you a line of thought and ten steps to understand and transform your fears and reveal your potential:

We are not focusing on fears that are part of our survival instincts; let’s consider those instinctual fears (IF). We are focusing on mental fears that prevent us from taking risks, engaging in change, and are capable of supporting the idea that our personality is who we are. We’ll call them psychological fears (PF). PFs are conscious and subconscious, which means that you are not aware of some of them. Some PFs camouflage as personality traits: “I’m not somebody who goes dancing with friends.” Once you become aware of a PF or identify it as a detrimental pattern, the fear starts transforming: “After a friend said that I have a talent with Salsa, I started to enjoy dancing.” PFs are the result of our individual experiences, and they include cultural influences. “My family prides on hard work and professionalism, and because of that, I didn’t receive enough support for my early interest in art. Today I work for a recognized corporation, but I feel something is missing in my life.” Calling up a PF is more an art than a science. I recommend starting by identifying a repeating pattern, reflect on its influence in behavior, and pay attention when the behavior repeats: “Although I can afford it, I never make time for playing the guitar. I do the same each time I want to enjoy; I’m always in a rush to work more. This PF is fear of joy or fear of not being good enough in my job.” Once you identify a PF, you’ll catch it up each time the pattern affects your behavior. That familiarity will make it inevitable for you to go over it: “I don’t care anymore, I’ll start playing the guitar today and every coming Saturday. I love this!” Every PF is different, and it will take a different amount of time and attention to transform and let it go. It’s safe to assume, working on your fears is a lifetime process. Each time a PF fades away from your life, you feel freer. You’ll also get to know new aspects of yourself, and you might find some previously unknown talents. “I didn’t think I could be a good gardener; I think I’m moving to the countryside.” The ultimate PF is the one that speaks to you when you finally got the strength to do something to defeat other PFs: “It’s been already a week of riding my bike each day, now I wonder if this is damaging my chances to find a job.”

My mom always said that if I sincerely want something, I’ll find the way of making it happen. She wasn’t talking about magic but the exquisite pleasure we feel when we pursue what we love.

If you are an entrepreneur, a freelancer, or a person trying to achieve your full potential, never forget that your fears are like wearing sunglasses at night.

Let me end with a fantastic quote by Alan Watts, one of my best sources of wisdom and inspiration:

“But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track. See? what we are doing is, we’re bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch and no vomit. It never gets there. And so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question: What do I desire?” — Alan Watts

If we all agree on the definition of fear, then humankind would not experience such a level of conflict never again. Why? Because if we are not afraid, we would not be so defensive, reactive, and ignorant. We would surely understand better what freedom means.

Thanks for reaching to the end! And don’t forget to reach out if you need some support on getting rid of your PFs.

If you find this useful, you might like to participate in my Sense of Purpose online training.

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