Fear Shift
You slap the snooze bar on your alarm clock. What does this accomplish? It delays your waking up and starting your day. A snooze slap here and there won’t diminish the ultimate goal of the alarm, but employ it too many times, and what happens? The effectiveness of the alarm — the whole point of setting an alarm in the first place — begins to work against itself, against you.
Your intention may go beyond failure to create more challenges.
It’s inevitable — that alarm is going to go off again. Repetition only increases the number of times you feel the anxiety associated with an alarm; the stress accumulates.
Fear is also a useful alarm — a wake-up call, a red flag — something requires your attention. Do you slap the imaginary bar on top of your fears? Fear is an emotional response to a lack of information. When you have the necessary information to take action, then you’re not afraid — you shift into bravery. Courage is not the absence of fear.
Because fear creates an undesirable emotional response, you attach the emotion to the Thing that requires your attention, and you avoid it — the Thing you don’t want to engage. What does that solve? Your immediate emotional state (maybe). Does it empower you to take action? No, it inhibits you, delays the inevitable, puts off the information gathering that will allow you to transform the situation.
What are you afraid of? How can you respond to fear as a practical tool?
- Acknowledge the alarm — wake up. Take note of what requires your attention.
- Separate the emotional response from the Thing itself. The awful feeling in the pit of your stomach or the chemicals flooding your brain are the alarm bleeping — it’s the wake-up call, not what you stand to gain from heeding that call.
- Shift into your intellect — into a mode of pure curiosity. Put your thinking cap on. Become a scientist, a researcher, a student of the Thing you fear. Detach from the emotional response (turn off the alarm) and seek purely intellectual information.
Information is power — grow your power by feeding it facts.
Terrified that your bank balance may be teetering on the edge between Black and Red? You can’t take strategic action without knowing the numbers. Snoozing the alarm, writing another check, not sure if it will clear but crossing your fingers, insures that the alarm will go off again… Covering your eyes and not looking as you swipe the check card is snoozing — it insures yet another hateful wake-up call.
That uncertainty — the ignorance of the cold hard facts — is what makes you afraid. Numbers can’t hurt you.
Are you afraid your wife is pissed off at you? Don’t know why? Afraid to know? Avoiding finding out? How can you be sure it’s something you did if you don’t find out from the source? Ask her. It may not be anything you did that upset her… stop the alarm and have a conversation — find out the source of the alarm. Something requires your assistance or attention. The facts in themselves are data, they have no emotions.
Stop snoozing in your relationship and treading on eggshells wondering what the problem might be.
How have you transformed the blaring alarm of fear into attention and action powered by more information? Help me out by sharing your own real world example in the comments below.
Fear is a Question mark. Fear is an assignment from your Higher Self. Before you release your fear, allow yourself to spend some time being intensely — dispassionately — curious about it.
What can you do about the paralyzing emotional and biological experience of fear? So that you can be curious about what your fears want you to pay attention to, to learn from… I recommend Jeff Lily’s audio download Meditation to Release Fear — from the Druid Journal Guided Meditation Series
Seek Wisdom — Practice Love
Contacting Your Spirit Guide 101
Free resources for Shift Your Spirits readers:
- Read the eBook by Slade Roberson especially for beginners who want to know who/what spirit guides are and how to communicate with them
- Listen to the mp3 preview of the Spirit Guide Attunement portion of the Talking to Your Spirit Guides class by Slade Roberson
- Try the meditation to Meet a Guide contributed by Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal
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5 Responses to “Fear Shift”
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Slade,
Your example makes much sense to me, as I’m actually capable of hitting the (10 minute) snooze button as much as 9 times before getting up! A habit I’m starting to change.
What does this resistance to getting up tell me? I don’t enjoy what I do all day long, at all. And when I finally get home and do what I really want to do, the later I stay up doing it, the more desperate (and tired) I feel when that alarm starts nagging me again the next morning, reminding me that I’m not there… yet.
Hi Slade, that really hit home! Mostly it was the alarm analogy. Snoozing just puts me in a really bad mood in the morning. I’m going to break that habit.
You also moved me to do something that I had slated to do today that I just delayed and delayed.
Thanks for the Zen slap!
In Spirit,
Nneka
Great post, Slade! The alarm clock is a great analogy that truly brings the point home. I agree that fear, along with other negative emotions, serves us as a “heads up!” And in order to resolve the issue, we need to look at it closely. I love your recommendation of dispassionate curiosity to investigate the issue. Fear truly only has the amount of power over us that we assign to it. As soon as we apply consciousness to fear, it becomes a useful tool.
Blessings,
Andrea
Slade,
I enjoyed this article, and thought it was well put. We do indeed at times prefer sleep, unconsciousness, and denial to facing our fears and dealing with the difficult things in life (or what we fear will be difficult).
I know an imaginary person who shall not be named who slapped his or her hand on the snooze button so often that it became a habit so strong that it is still the knee-jerk reaction (or so he tells me).
But habits that have been made can be unmade. Every attempt to face the unpleasant makes further efforts easier. This is the secret of “skillful action” which the Buddhists speak of. We need to develop the skill of attention, of alertness, of being awake.
How have I transformed the blaring alarm of fear into attention and action powered by more information?
By running like hell to the balcony, where I can get perspective, objectivity and the big picture! I’ve even written an e-book called “Go to the Balcony to Get a Grip!” because the technique has been so powerful for me. It’s really all about bringing presence to the situation - detaching from the egoic aspects of the situation (including emotion) and being with what is. When I can do that, my fears are automatically reduced, if not allayed. No surprise that all kinds of ‘information’ is available when we can detach like that.