The Secret To Destroying Fear

The other night, I woke up around 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep.

You’ve been there before, right? That horrible tossing and turning? Too hot and too cold at the same time? Mind racing like Secretariat?

So I started trying to pick apart the reason I was awake — because it didn’t make sense. My brain was spinning, but over nothing. Not even over stupid things, but truly over nothing. Just spinning.

That’s when I remembered that all negative emotions — all stress, all anger, all discouragement, all jealousy, all pride —  boils down to fear.

I’ve talked about fear before…what a bully it is, how it takes the form of resistance, preventing us from accomplishing the things that we’re meant to do. My mind has learned a lot about how fear works and how to fight it. I’ve learned about how the amygdyla works. I’ve learned about remapping neural pathways.

But my heart still feels fear.

I’m afraid of a lot of things.

• Cockroaches
• Dead things
• Public embarrassment
• Doing a bad job
• Offending people
• Failing in my new life as a writer
• Succeeding as a writer
• Failing as a mother
• Failing as a wife
• Running out of money
• Running out of time
• Being too exhausted by stupid things to do the things that matter
• Deciding that the wrong things matter

The thing is, I’ve done or seen or touched or lived all of these things, and I’m still alive. So why am I still afraid?

Here’s the secret: It’s all a trick.

There is no reason to fear any of this stuff, it’s just a trick to keep me from moving forward. As long as I’m following God and listening to Him, there’s nothing to fear. Fear is just me getting in the way.

God doesn’t want us to be afraid. He repeats that a lot (because sometimes we’re a little dense). He wants to take our fear away; we just have to give it up.

And you conquer fear, what’s left is hope. (you can tweet that!)

Hope is really important. It’s so important that I wrote (and give away for free) a little manifesto to bring hope to the discouraged dreamer (Get it here).

Hope forms the foundation for our dreams. Hope propels us forward. Hope fuels us as we dream of making a difference in the world, of helping people, of leaving a legacy. When we’re driven by hope, we grow, we influence. We matter.

And hope is a choice.

Today — this hour, this moment — I choose hope.

What are you afraid of? Leave a comment…