Facing the Fear of the Unknown

How many times have you held yourself back because of fear?

A lot of people stay in unhealthy relationships or situations because of the fear of the unknown.

Living from a place of fear only prevents you from having the life you want.

In this week’s episode, Lauren talks about how to combat and overcome the fears holding you back.

Hello, my friend. And welcome back to comeback class. I hope that you are having a good week and I’m so glad that you have come back to join me this week for today’s episode. We’re gonna talk about facing the fear of the unknown. Now I wanted to talk about this because I think it applies not only to relationships, but also to a lot of other situations in our lives. Want you to try to think of a time when maybe you held yourself back because of fear or because you were thinking a lot about the, what if, for example, maybe you didn’t go after that job that you really wanted because you felt like maybe you were unqualified or you just didn’t bother applying because you didn’t think you would get it, or maybe you wanted to move to a new state or even a new country.

And you didn’t because you were afraid because of X, Y, or Z, or maybe you really felt like you should set a boundary with someone in your life. But you didn’t do that because of fear of how they may react. So I feel like the, the fear of what if or the fear of the unknown is something that comes up in a lot of situations. But specifically when it comes to relationships or romantic relationships I do see a lot of people that stay in really a unhealthy relationships because of fear of the unknown or fear of what will happen if they leave that person. And I wanna be very clear and just say that I don’t mean fear in the sense of retaliation or some type of abuse. That is something that is out out of my, of practice. But but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about here is the fear of going into a situation where you don’t know how things are gonna turn out, ending this relationship and going out on your own. Now, someone who is in this type of situation may have a lot of questions is going through their minds, such as what if I never find someone else? What if I end up alone forever? What if I never find happiness? What if they move on? What if they move on before me? What if they end up happier without me? And these are all it’s normal to have this sort of reaction, but I want you to recognize these questions for what they are and where they’re coming from. And they’re coming from a place of fear. And what I don’t want you to do is to ask yourself these questions so much so that you are, you become paralyzed by the fear of the unknown or the fear of what could or, or may not happen.

And yes, making a big change in your life or even a small change in your life can be somewhat scary. But I want you to remember this, anytime that you are making a positive change in your life, you are going to feel some discomfort that is normal, and that is to be expected. But what I want you to do is to take that discomfort as a sign that you are moving in the right direction, nothing worth doing is truly simple. And I really believe that it is with doing the hard thing or the difficult thing. That is what allows us to grow. And when you live your life from a constant place of fear and apprehension, it prevents you from creating the life that you want, or the life that you were meant to have. And many of us even play it small or sell ourselves short because we are of what might happen.

Even if we have no like legitimate proof or anything substantial to say, you know, this is what’s gonna happen, or you’re you are going to fail. You don’t, you don’t know that. And even if you do fail, you’re gonna fail forward. You’re gonna fail and you’re gonna learn and gonna get up. And you’re gonna try again, but creating all of these crazy scenarios in your head about what could happen, I is just not serving you. And it’s gonna keep you stuck where you are and you don’t have to figure everything out right this second, you can figure it out as you go. And that’s the beautiful thing. You don’t have to wait. A lot of us, you know, we spend so much time stressing and overanalyzing the future and you know, months and years and decades from now, what’s gonna happen. And you, you don’t even need to do that.

If you just simplify things as much as possible and, and say to yourself, how am I going to deal with this moment that I’m in right now? How am I going to process this situation? And what can I do right now? What is within my power to do at this moment? And if you break it down like that into little, tiny, manageable pieces of time, then it’s a lot easier to make those big changes, right? Just like anything. I mean, if you, any goal that you have or anything that you wanna to do, it’s much easier if you break it up into little tiny pieces. So if you are in a relationship where you are extremely unhappy and you know that now is the right time to end it by thinking all of, by getting into all these questions like, well, what if I never find someone else?

What if they never find how happiness, what if they move on? Or what if they end up happier without me now, you’re just starting to spiral. So just like, like pump the brakes and let’s just deal with today. And today what we need to deal with, or what we need to think about is how are we gonna have this conversation? And I want you to remember this, that chances are whatever the worst case scenario is that you could possibly come up with in your head. You are going to survive. You are going to be okay, but you need to take it one small a thing at a time. And this goes back to again, what I say constantly, because I have learned it to be true. Is that the most important thing that you can focus your energy on is what you can control. And a lot of these questions that you’re asking yourself, you don’t have a, any control over the outcome.

You know, what that person chooses to do after you end your relationship is not within your control. So therefore it really doesn’t need to be a concern. Now, of course, it’s natural to, you know, wanna know what they’re doing and how they’re handling things and whatnot. But again, it’s not Irving you, the best thing that you can do is focus on the things that you can control and focus on one thing at a time. Honestly, it’s like, there’s some of these things that I’ve learned, these mindset tricks or hacks or whatever you wanna call them is basically just simplifying things, simp your thoughts. And it just, it just makes everything easier making decisions and you know, living from a place of abundance instead of scarcity and not living in not making decisions from a place of fear, it really, really works. And it’s really helpful.

Now, something that your brain is gonna likely want to do is reject the change or or reject doing something differently. Right? and that’s natural. And this, this type of work does take some practice. It’s not something that, you know, you can just adopt overnight, but what you can do is every time you have a thought, ask yourself, is this coming from a place of fear? Is this coming from a place of scarcity or is this coming from a place of abundance? And with that, you have the ability to change your thoughts. And I’m telling you this stuff is so powerful. It’s, it’s really amazing, but that, I would say that be your first step is when you recognize that you’re, you know, you’re having a thought out of fear, try to change it and, and create a thought from abundance. So for example, instead of saying to yourself, why do bad things always happen to me, ask yourself, what does this situation make possible for me?

And it might feel kind of weird at first and it does. But eventually you will start to change the way you ask yourself questions. Now, another way of making decisions is to do it from your future, make decisions as yourself from your future, right? So it sounds kind of weird, but if you think about it like that, if you think about, you know, who you envision yourself to be in the future, you know, whether it be whatever a few months, few years from now, whatever, when you are in the place where you wanna be, what would you tell your current self to do in this situation? How would you encourage, how would your future self encourage your current self? So I wanna give you an example and see if this helps the concept make a little bit more sense. So let’s say you’re in a place right now where you are maybe in a relationship you’re very unhappy.

You know, that this is not a situation that you should be in and you’re ready to end it, but you are scared, right? And then I want you to think about your future self, your ideal self, who is in a loving, committed, happy relationship that is healthy. So I want you to, as your future self in that happy, committed, loving relationship, give advice to your current self . What would your future self tell your current self to do more often than not? I feel that the answers are within us and we know as individuals, we know what is best for us, but sometimes we hold ourselves back because we’re afraid we can’t make decisions because we’re afraid. So if you try to eliminate that element of fear and just trust that everything is going to work out, as it’s supposed to, you will be okay, and it will be easier to make decisions.

So trust that everything is going to work out, try to have thoughts from a place of abundance, as opposed to, from a place of scarcity and learn to coach yourself from a place in your future and make sure that when you are facing your fear and you’re, you’re diving in, and you’re gonna make these decisions that you’re breaking them up into little bitty pieces. So by doing all of these things, you will learn to understand that fear is a lot of times made up from within us and it’s not serving us and it’s not helpful. It’s normal. And it’s natural to feel fear, but you have to recognize it for what it is and say, oh, Nope, this is just coming from a place of fear. You know, let me do my mindset work. And let me think about this differently. And aside from that, the greatest way to face your fears is to take action is to actually do something about it.

Because when you take action, the threat of the fear becomes smaller and smaller until eventually it’s not there anymore. And when you start conquering your fears in one area of your life, it’s going to have a Domo domino effect, and it’s going to spill over into other areas of your life. And eventually you may even get some type of fuel from being afraid. Like you may be able to eventually recognize your fear and say, oh, I’m afraid, which means I gotta do it. So if you are feeling the fear today, whether about a relationship, a breakup, any, any kind of situation, if you’re feeling fear about something, I want you to recognize it for what it is. And I want you to coach yourself from already having overcome the fear, remember that you can do hard things. And it’s often through doing the hard thing. We have the greatest reward, okay? So you can do this, whatever it is that you’re going through, whatever it is that is scaring you, or, or if there’s something that you’re avoiding that, you know, you need to do, just know that you can do it. You can do hard stuff. You really can. Thanks again for being here with me today and for listening to the podcast, if you are enjoying it, please go ahead and leave me a review. I would so appreciate it. And I will see you guys next week. Take care.