Are you leading with fear? Let love be your guide

Have you ever had a moment of unprecedented awareness, a moment when you see yourself with vivid transparency? For me, one of those moments was when I realized how many important choices I was making from fear. My strategy for success and happiness had been to avoid failure and emotional pain. This moment of awareness was steeped in a truth: My choices were not moving me away from my fears (insert the theme music for Jaws here); they were moving me further away from myself.

Leading our lives from fear may not look like we imagine, and we may miss the signs. It could be we’re wildly successful in a soul-sucking career or fiercely independent and lonely as hell; we could be saving the world while denying our own vulnerability and well-being; we may be running free and untethered through life while holding hostage within us the full expression of who we are.

Sometimes we move so quickly in life that it takes a crash before we’re forced to stop and see where we are. We look around and realize that, at some point, we lost our way and ended up in a life that looks nothing like the one we imagined. We’ve become someone we don’t recognize as ourselves.

I heard on the news recently reports that many people are leaving their careers post-pandemic. I’m not surprised. The pandemic brought many aspects of our lives to a resounding halt and gave us time to look around. I think in years to come, many of us will look back on this experience and see it not only as a time where lives were lost and grief ran deep but as a time also when lives were found and dreams reclaimed.

I invite you to join me in looking at our lives consciously and deliberately. Let’s look for places where our fear has taken us off course and let love help us get back on track. Let’s bring our dreams and desires out of the closet and wear them proudly while we shake the dust of complacency off our bodies and revel in the sensuous world around us.

As I’ve said before, this is our time. We are the generation of a global pandemic. To think we can come out of this the same as we went in would be unwise and a wasted opportunity to flow with this forward-moving energy. The Bible says, “to everything there is a season.” I am choosing to make this the season of courageous love. How about you?

xo

 

P.S.: Be forewarned. When you start unpacking this year you may meet a few “hangry” wolves inside you, impatient and unsatisfied by what you’ve been feeding them during the pandemic! I’ve included five clues below to recognizing when fear may be informing your decisions.

Is fear guiding your choices? Here are five clues it may be:

• When you are conveying your decision, either to yourself or to others, and you hear yourself talking more about what you will be avoiding by making the decision than what you will be creating

• If you hear yourself making excuses for why it’s okay to stay in situations that, at the end of the day, leave you feeling unsatisfied, unfilled, or even more afraid

• You spend days, months, or years talking about your dreams, trying to find your purpose and/or discover who you really are, and spend little to no time or effort on making it happen or getting clear about what’s been stopping you

• You worry or “analyticalize” yourself out of making important decisions

• You avoid taking appropriate risks or saying yes to opportunities that might change the status quo or rock the boat you’ve been on that you know is going nowhere