Fear and Courage

This quote by Nelson Mandela, "I learned that courage was the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear" is one of the most powerful quotes I have read regarding fear. For a long time now, I have had a goal to have no fear. And at some point I realized that is not a reasonable goal, I will always have fear in some way.

I am learning to not let fear cripple me in to not doing something, or not saying something that I need to say. Fear is something that I grew up with, fear of the unknown, fear of disappointing people, fear of speaking my truth, fear of losing people, fear of losing control - so many fears. That fear has stopped me many times from doing something adventurous, and it has also stopped me from speaking from my heart. I am learning to live wholeheartedly and finding my voice, along with trusting my intuition. And the more I walk through my fears, the easier it is. It sometimes makes me sick to my stomach but once I do it, it is a huge wash of relief. And something else that happens is I feel so much stronger, so much more courageous. And I believe that this slow, but important process is what creates different memories for me to pull from, then when I am fearful again I can look back and say, when I walked through fear last time it was so much better than not moving through the fear. We change the makeup of our brain chemistry that way, by creating positive memories around the things that we fear. Baby steps, little by little we can walk through fear more and more. Fear will never be absent, but my courage in conquering it will get stronger every time. Namaste :)