Daily Gratitude: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face'”

Take a few minutes right now. And I mean right now. Write down your fears. Yes, it may be a long list but do it anyway. No one’s going to see it but you so list them all, even the weirdo ones.

Now list the things you avoid doing because of these fears. This may take a bit more thinking but it’s important.

Look at the list of things you avoid doing and ask yourself how important each of them is to you. You can use a scale of 1-10 or just general categories like very important, medium, not important, etc. I think the more items you have on this list, the finer the scale should be (like 1-10 for example).

Now circle the ones that are important or are above 6 or 7 on your scale (I’m just listing arbitrary values. You’ll see what’s important the longer you gaze at the list).

Look deeply at the ones you’ve circled. List them on a separate page. Next to each put the fear or fears that are keeping you from doing it.

Once you’re done with the lists you can see more objectively what your fears are keeping you from. Now you have to decide which is more powerful – the desire to do something or the thing keeping you from doing it (aka your fear). This is the emotional part.

Sit with these feelings and imagine what you’d feel like if you could take your eraser and wipe out the fears. What would be keeping you from doing that which you desire. Sure there may now be money in the way or lack of time. But if you really want to do something and you wipe away your fears, all the other things are solvable with some creativity. It’s getting past the barrier door, the fears, that are the most essential.