I will admit, I used to be pretty afraid….of just about anything and everything. I have always had big dreams, (I still do), but I have only made a few of those big dreams happen.
Why you ask?
I shared a dream with a friend who was so skeptical and unenthusiastic she might as well have yawned at me. I was shattered, but I figured she was jealous. Just in case she wasn’t, I sat on my dreams a few more years and shared a few with someone else after a bit.
‘The problem with you is that you have all these things that you think you can do but you can’t. Some things are best left to other people Karabo, you don’t have what it takes!’ Was the response.
You would have thought that it would push me to try prove them wrong. But it didn’t. I looked for the deepest darkest place I could find inside my heart and hid there. I knew they were wrong, but I had seen fear and instead of chasing fear away, I ran away instead. I had all these negative thoughts running around inside my head, ‘You are a dreamer!’ ‘What if they were right?’ ‘What if I fail?’ ‘What if the world doesn’t like my ideas?’ ‘My friends like me the way I am’. I started coming up with excuse after excuse and not making any of my dreams come true.
Until I got tired of fear. I didn’t wake up and see the light! No, it took a while for me to come out from where I had hid myself and fall in love with myself again, fall in love with my dreams and ideas which thank God were still there.
Someone asked me why I was afraid when I knew the word and it hit me! I knew the One who could protect me from all my fears and instead of taking all my fears to Him, I had hid them, pretending everything was okay while it was not.
Romans 8:35-39 King James Version (KJV)
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It had been there all the time. I just was not listening. With a connection to God, I had nothing to be afraid of. It was my Damascus experience. I stepped out into the light as if I had been blind. Seeing and feeling everything anew. Afraid of nothing and no one. With a clear mind that sometimes things will happen, people will say things or do things. That is not my fault and that does not mean the end of the world for me.
It is easy to fall back into the trap of being afraid. I remind myself daily that I have nothing to fear. To prevent myself from slipping back to my old ways, I have put together a plan.
Below I share some tips for how I keep myself from slipping back.
Fear be Gone Guide
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Root Cause Analysis:
- (You can tell I am in IT right?) Well, what makes you fearful? What causes you to be afraid? Find that and eliminate it from your life (If you can). If you can’t, knowing what makes you fearful will help you better come up with coping mechanisms.
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Pray:
- Talk to God. God created you and He is interested in even the small simple details of your life. Tell Him exactly what the problem is. Remember, he knows it already. He is just waiting for you to come and talk to Him about it. He wants to take care of the problem for you, but only if you ask him to.
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Affirm yourself:
- You were created by an amazing Creator, therefore it stands that you are an amazing creature made in the image of God. There are so many voices in the world that sometimes we forget just how amazing we are as humans. Tell yourself daily how amazing you are. You can find some affirmations I put together here
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Read:
- You will never know of God’s promises until you read about them in the book. It is not enough to hear about them, you need to read them for yourself, claim them for yourself. Read lots of self empowerment books as well. Grow as you read.
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TED Talks/Motivational Talks:
- These are simply amazing. I download motivational talks on YouTube and listen to them as soon as I get into the car. When I feel good and ready for the day, then I can turn the radio on. I get to work feeling pumped and ready to add some real value.
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Share:
- Do not hoard your knowledge after acquiring it. Make the world and yourself better by sharing all the wonderful things you have read about or watched.
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Exercise:
- Not only is it good for your body, it is great for your mental well being as well. Increased energy levels, happiness, great for weight loss and control, mental alertness and lots of other benefits to exercise.
