How to choose courage over fear and live your best life

“Why are you always so mean to yourself?”, Shaun asked me last night as I was dwelling in self doubt and crippling fear.

“Because”, I said, “I don’t know how else to treat myself.”

He grabbed my shoulders, looked at me and said “where is this coming from? You’re nice to your body now, but you have moved on to being mean to yourself about everything else you do.”

He was right. I made peace with food and with my body and I stopped letting my negative body image take over my life.

Yet, my fear of not being enough had taken over other areas of my life, especially my professional life.

Where our fear of failure is rooted in

I was taught at a young age to suppress my feelings, especially anger and frustration.

Whenever I felt emotional, I was told to “just calm down” and “stop being a baby”.

Pleasing everyone around me was the only way to be loved, or so I thought.  I committed to bottling up my emotions and to be a social chameleon, meaning that I strived to fit in, instead of stand out.

Always.

I showed up as a different person for everyone in my life and become a “yes sayer”.

I was also taught that feeling proud of myself or believing in myself would mean that I am “arrogant” and “full of myself”.

Everything I’ve ever done in my life was criticized by family members, even former friends. This has resulted in massive fear of being an imposter. It rears its head every single day.

All our fears are rooted in the belief that we are not enough: Not smart enough, not worthy enough, not funny enough, not beautiful enough, not capable enough and simply just not enough.

But there is a way to channel our fear into courage

The definition of courage is not to ignore your fear, it is to do embrace fear as part of your human experience and to show up as your inner superhero.

I know, this sounds very cliché, but stay with me.

Our biggest heroes (think Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Captain America, Wonder Woman, whoever your hero is) felt afraid, too. They didn’t just save the world without batting an eye lash.

They felt the fear and did it anyway.

Ask yourself: What does courage feel like for you?

Visualize yourself as your courageous superhero. Put yourself into the situation you are afraid of and let yourself feel the fear. Let yourself feel the courage, too. For me, courage feels like this: My heart is palpitating, I am excited and anxious at the same time and I feel both afraid and powerful all at once.

What does courage feel like for you?

Close your eyes for a few seconds and paint a picture for yourself. Feel the feeling of both fear and victory and breathe it all in.

That is how you channel your fear into courage every single time.

It’s a constant process of inner work, of questioning our fears and self doubts and of standing up to our inner critic.

Take action especially when you feel afraid

I created a Work Sheet for myself a while ago that helped me channel my fears into courage as much as possible, especially when it came to my relationship with food, my body and how I want to show up in my life moving forward.

 I am giving it away for free, in case you want to take action right now. Taking action is what sets us apart from our past-selves of sitting in our fear and not doing anything about it.

Take action my friend, be courageous. You have your superhero inside of you, time to let him/her out!