FEAR!

So what is fear? Well, first of all, let me share a very important secret with you. Fear is not the enemy; we are. Fear is actually our friend. Fear is a powerful force that is simply providing us with an opportunity to see something that we need to resolve within ourselves in order to experience more of our potential.

You've probably heard that fear is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. In truth, fear is an illusion. It's something we create from within us. I mean, if I said to you, "I want you to go out and get me a 10-pound bag of fear," where would you go? When I ask audiences this, they often give me answers like my husband, my wife, my boss, Space Mountain, flying, or one of the many other experiences that people find fearful. Of course the reality is that we give events—experiences that happened in our past or could potentially happen in our future—a meaning that creates a biochemical reaction inside of our bodies that generates a feeling we call fear.

When we face our fears and overcome them, we realize that fear really is an illusion. We create fear through our thoughts and emotions about something that either happened in our past or something that might happen in our future. Unfortunately, when faced with the opportunity to face their fears, many people use the acronym, forget everything, and run. Each time people miss an opportunity to face one of their fears, they give fear even more power over them. They start to lose confidence, and the fear becomes more difficult to face. Each time they turn away from fear, they lose a little more of their sense of certainty about who they really are and the unlimited potential that lies within them. They create doubt in their own mind about their capabilities, and they start to feel inadequate.

This feeling of inadequacy affects all areas of their lives: their relationship with themselves, their self-respect, their relationships with friends and family. Relationships at work and their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health are all negatively impacted. This in turn begins to create disease in their bodies and their lives.

The purpose of fear is not to make us feel inadequate, but to show us that we are powerful beyond measure. When we allow fear to control us, we feel suppressed, constricted. When that happens, we start to generate thoughts and emotions that cause us to experience feelings such as anger, jealousy, resentment, and depression. When people feel bad about themselves, they often take it out on the people closest to them, putting them down to make themselves feel better, or they suppress their feelings and become like a time bomb that can go off at any moment.