My blood has run cold twice this year with such profound fear that I have barely been able to breathe for the intensity of it. Interestingly, both times it has been because of a conversation with a well-meaning woman.

Fear is a fascinating subject as it masquerades under the guise of guilt, shame, anger and loneliness. It dances in and out of every one of our lives and sometimes stays long past curfew.
If you’re like most of us, entrepreneurs have a long-standing relationship with fear. One moment, all is well in your business and you feel like you can do the impossible. The next moment, a bigger than expected bill arrives, a client cancels, a contract falls through that you were counting on, and you plummet to ground zero faster than you ever climbed up the ladder of success.

The second time my blood ran cold was when a woman, after analyzing a saliva test I had done for my hormone levels said to me, ‘You know that you are at high risk for breast cancer, don’t you?’ I sucked in my breath and felt the fear that every woman feels hearing that ‘C’ word. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I sheepishly replied. ‘I write business and marketing plans. I don’t know much about hormones’, I confessed.

For the next few days, those words rang through my head with amazing frequency and tenaciousness, almost paralyzing me. My mother had had breast cancer, and I had found a lump in my own right breast several years ago. I found myself looking at my breasts in the bathroom mirror and seeing them for the first time with fear of the disease they might contain.

Well thank God, that lasted for all of about three days. My breasts are fine, thank you very much, and they are staying right where God planted them. I recently attended a workshop with a doctor who admitted that most women who die of breast cancer, die of the FEAR of the prognosis, and that technically women should never die of breast cancer. Isn’t that a fascinating thought? Is fear really that powerful? Is it really powerful enough to kill us? According to this doctor, YES! Last month alone, he helped 12 women cure themselves of breast tumors.

So if fear will do that to our breasts, what does fear do in every area of our life? How does it keep us from having the business or life we really want? For one thing, it keeps us small and safe. It keeps us from showing up in the world like we would really, really like to. It can literally paralyze us from moving forward.

I think of fear like a piranha. Piranhas have a voracious appetite for flesh and they will bite through steel to get at food. Fear is like that. It is voracious - once you give it a nibble, man, it pulls up to the dining room table and digs in.

Have you noticed that once you allow that one little thought to hang out for more than a nanosecond in your mind, you’ve gone from having a small financial issue to seeing yourself as the bag lady pushing the shopping cart down Main Street? You lose one client and all of a sudden your mind has you out on the street with no business, no money and an absolute loser. I know that I’ve certainly been guilty of not only inviting fear in, but letting it get cozy and comfortable in my life.

How do you stop fear dead in its tracks?

It’s not easy - especially at first when you may live with fear as a constant companion and not even realize it. We can get used to sleeping with the enemy you know. So identify if you are commonly coming from a place of fear. If you are wondering, ask someone you trust if you are a fear-based person.

Then when those doubts, that stomach turning queasiness starts, stop what you are doing and ask where it has come from. Maybe it was something someone said. Perhaps it is that unexpected bill or a nagging financial issue. It could be fear of something that hasn’t even happened yet! Identify its source.

Once I have identified the source, then I ask myself, ‘Is this really true or have I concocted my own soap opera version of life?’ So in the case of my most precious breasts, I had a conversation with myself that went something like this:

‘Do you have breast cancer?’

‘Well no’, I answered.

‘So you are worrying about something that hasn’t even happened or you don’t know for sure. It’s only a high risk at this time, am I right?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Mmm, well don’t you think that it would be wise to look after your health maybe a bit better, and stop putting the extra stress of worry on top of it as well?’

‘That would make sense,’ I found myself answering.

‘And this woman is not a doctor, she hasn’t done any tests to verify that you have breast cancer, she just wanted to get your attention so you would take some appropriate precautionary action, right?’

By this time, I can see how ridiculous I have been - blowing one short sentence into a true death sentence!

Have that kind of reasoning conversation with yourself like you would a child. Really, that is what is going on. A childlike part of you that is afraid, is showing up, and needs some reassurance.

Visualize what you do want. I want a healthy body, with lots of energy and all my organs and body parts in good shape and functioning well. I see myself like that every day. I thank my body every day for serving me so brilliantly well.

Stop talking about it! It’s far too easy to start down that path of fear and then feed it like a nursing baby demanding our attention every few hours. We chat with our girlfriends, husbands or partners, workmates or employees, and we discuss exactly what we are NOT wanting to attract into our lives. Yet what we think about and talk about is like this great big giant magnet in the sky bringing us more of the same stuff, stuff we don’t want! So stop talking about what you don’t want. Focus on what you do want. Keep your conversation upbuilding and positive. That too is a habit that can be developed.

I know - when peri-menopause and a recurrence of chronic fatigue syndrome hit earlier this year like a bolt of lightening out of nowhere, I found myself constantly talking about how lousy I felt. I wore my suffering like a badge of honor. Finally I remembered that I was only bringing more of what I talked about into my life…and I shut-up. I stopped talking about the symptoms. Plain and simple. Now let me tell you, it was sometimes challenging to not get started on the sleepless nights, the low energy or the 10 pounds I gained! But today, I am free of the symptoms with no medication! So this does work.

Lastly, look at the people in your life. Are there friends and acquaintances who thrive on the negative, who titillate to the juiciness of what could go wrong, and who are jealous if you aren’t playing in the sandbox of fear with them? Let them go. Move on with your life and they will either realize that they don’t fit in anymore or they will emulate the positive changes you are making.

Fear is a friend when a car is about to run you over, or when you are about to walk over a precipice. Otherwise, it really is a hugely over-rated part of your life. I suggest that you give it up. Say good-bye. Don’t worry - it will show up if you really need it. If your life is in danger, you’ll feel the fear, promise.

In the meantime, you don’t need to invite it to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Replace it with joy, peace, love, faith and hope and literally cram your thoughts and days with so much of these things that fear gets left out in the cold - right where it belongs.

Have an amazing month!

With love and light,
Jan

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