When fear appears in our lives it can block us from moving forward. There are many different strategies to help you deal with fear. For one, you can identify at the root what beliefs contribute to the fear, when the belief developed, how it has impacted the decisions you have made in your life, and cultivate a new belief that is mobilizing.
This is a great strategy…but not what I want to focus on today.
I really want to talk about gratitude. I keep coming back to this as a strategy to use each and every day and in all kinds of situations. As a parent, I know that gratitude is what gets me through some of the most demanding days. When I forget to find gratitude, I become lost and focused all too much on what is not good.
Focusing on problems does not allow you to find solutions.
Gratitude, for me, is about being present and acknowledging all that is abundant in your life. Tony Robbins says it well, “When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”
Are you afraid that things are not going to work out? Spiral out-of-control? Or just get worse or too difficult? Fearing what will be will only paralyze you in moving forward and fulfilling that which you desire.
I have countless stories of situations where something bad happened to me, but I was able to see the situation from a positive view. Just today, my two youngest boys were asking for one thing after another, being typical three-year old’s. I was starting to lose my patience and then I remembered that this will pass and that I am lucky to have the time with them. I am grateful that I have a break tomorrow in which I can focus on my stuff. This made me feel more full rather than being trapped in a mindset of deprivation and “poor me.”
You have probably have had this happen to you. If I had stayed focused only on the negative, it would have dragged me down, I would have become reactive to their constant demands and hurt the connection between us. My emotional state would have been affected and in for some, depending on the situation, this can last for days, maybe weeks or years.
But….I did not go down that path.
Instead, I chose to find reasons to be grateful and suddenly the situation did not feel so bad. Things could be worse, right?
Exactly! I realized that no matter how bad the situation, finding reasons to be grateful grounded me and life seemed doable.
This can be applied to every aspect of your life! You can find gratitude at any given moment if you choose to do this. My kids are demanding every bit of me…I remind myself of what I do have and can be thankful for. Just being able to hear them cry or witness their challenges, I can feel less uneasiness just by framing the situation with gratitude. This shifts my emotional state and allows me to deal with them with greater ease.
So, maybe fear is triggered by your belief that things will not work out, that you will not be happy, or that you won’t be loved. When it comes to dealing with fears, sure it makes sense to go deep and identify old beliefs, and you can also use the strategy of the gratitude frame to keep you moving forward and feeling filled with abundance.