It was a powerful day speaking to a room full of hundreds of women. Everyone there for the same reason; to grow as a woman, a mom, and an entrepreneur. To have a breakthrough, to live their lives without limits. While we all arrived at different places in our journeys, we had one occurring theme that continued to come up throughout the entire day,  F-E-A-R.

 

False Evidence Appearing Real. Face Everything And Rise. Feel Everything And Run!

It was in every talk particularly relating to how we get stuck. Fear is an epidemic today– We fear beginnings and endings, changing and staying the same, success and failure, living and dying, strength and vulnerability.

How we handle fear is an ultimate game-changer in our businesses and our lives.

Webster’s defines fear as ‘an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat’.

I don’t typically look up official word definitions, but what stood out to me was the word belief. In other words, our own beliefs about a situation determines our fear. Interesting. When my daughter Ali was born and diagnosed with a genetic, fatal disease called Cystic Fibrosis, by far my strongest emotion was fear even far beyond the devastation.

The journey of overcoming that fear not only as a mom, but teaching her to overcome her own fear of a life-threatening disease, has been a journey full of lessons I believe every woman can benefit from both personally and professionally. I’ve learned…

• The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.

Most of us wait until we are no longer afraid before we do something, instead of understanding the only way to overcome fear is by taking action, and staying in action. Do it afraid.

• We experience fear when we do something unfamiliar but so does everyone else.

Many times we feel alone in our fear, but understanding that everyone feels it can take away it’s power. The successful and fearless just take their fear along with them and do it anyway.

• Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from feeling helpless.

When we don’t push through our fears we have a ‘helpless’ feeling of being out of control, sometimes waiting for the ball to drop. We live in the “what-if’s?”.

Raising Ali has taught me to become fearless, in spite of my own fears as her mom. I love sharing our message with the world.

 

Be fearless,

nicole