“How can I feel comfortable and confident about myself — be unafraid and let go of negativity, something I struggle with constantly?”

“I am not the type of person that can break free of worrying about what others think. I have been like this my entire life… seeing how free you are about everything, I only wish I could be like that.”

Those are just a sampling of the emails and messages I’ve been getting from women who are interested in joining Body of Work, my six week course that begins on Wednesday, June 15th.

These are questions they want me to address on the information call I’m hosting on Friday, June 3rd at 12:00 p.m. EST, but really, these are questions they are constantly asking themselves.

And what they’re asking me (and themselves) comes down to this: They want to know how to be fearless. 

From where I stand, I can tell you this:

Fear never goes away completely. 

That might seem like really shitty news to get from a spirited life coach, but I think it’s actually excellent news.

To decide and go after what you want in your life is brave and exhilarating, and it can also scare the hell out of you. It really can be all of those things at once.

I have to call bullshit on those memes and Instagram quotes about junk-punching fear and eradicating it.

The absence of fear or judgment would actually mean you might have a mental health diagnosis : ) , so for some things, meeting and feeling fear is a sign that you are a conscious and discerning person who’s interested in being on the planet for as long as possible. Good stuff.

It’s when we aren’t meeting life-or-death challenges that fear often doesn’t serve us. Our fears can keep us from growing and showing up the way we want to in the world.

I like to say that if you let fear drive you, then you will struggle to live your life in a way that is congruent with your spirit that wants to thrive and show up fully.

This is the kind of language I hear from the women I work with around this kind of fear:

• “I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop and I’ll lose everything / lose control.”

• “I should just want what I have and leave it at that. Wanting more out of life is just asking for trouble.” 

• “If I take time to give more to myself, my life will fall apart. I wouldn’t even know where to begin anyway.” 

 

So here’s the foundational Body of Work lesson I’m going to offer you right now about how to begin a different relationship with your fears  — you don’t even have to sign up for the class, my friend. It’s yours for the taking:

Ask yourself this:

“If I do not want to feel afraid, then what do I want to feel?”

It all begins with deciding how you want to feel about your life.

It’s not enough to say, “I just want to stop being afraid.” 

That shit is never going to go away, girlfriend, so you’ve got to learn to dance with it.

When I am afraid — and you bet your ass I am (many times on the daily) — then I ask myself this:

How do I want to feel? How can I pat my fear on the head and let it know that I see how it thinks it’s trying to do a job it isn’t qualified for, and then ask myself what feeling needs to be driving me instead?

You know what feeling state usually comes up for me?

Freedom. I want to feel free.

Freedom drives my soul more than fear ever will. 

From there, I ask myself what thoughts I need to consider to build a case for freedom. And from there, I decide what actions I’m going to take to live out freedom.

Take the recent trip to Italy I took — here’s where fear stepped up and what it said:

“It’s too expensive. I shouldn’t spend that much on myself and not include my family.”

“What if I die on the trip and my family is left behind?”

“I will have traveled a lot before then; what kinds of things will people say when I take yet another trip so soon on the heels of the last one?”

“What if I love it so much that I want to keep traveling instead of stopping at this?” (isn’t that a fun one ; ) 

But I didn’t want my fear to win. I had to instead decide what I did want if I didn’t want to be afraid.

I wanted to experience wonder.

I wanted to connect with new people I could love.

I wanted to feel free  — free to move about the world and be a citizen of anywhere I landed.

And that’s when freedom stepped up and said:

“Travel makes me richer — in so many ways.” 

“There are tremendous odds in my favor that I’m going to be just fine and my family will live well — thrive, even — while I am away.”

“I really don’t have time to give a fuck what people think of my personal or professional travel endeavors. If they’re thinking about that, then they need to pay more attention to their own lives. It’s none of my business what other people think about me, anyway. Namaste.” 

“How amazing that I’ve built a life where I get to keep traveling? How cool is it that I land in cities all over the world and explore with confidence and curiosity? And feel like this is just how I roll — how I belong?” 

That’s what I teach, what I coach and how I live.

That’s the foundation of Body of Work. 

I help people build new mental landscapes that are their golden ticket into not just a more contented mindset, but a mind-blowing life, if that is what they want.

It’s not the flip of a switch. It takes commitment, a high level of personal responsibility, courage and patience to shift from a life grounded in fear to one that is ripe with possibility.

It’s a practice, and in my work, I teach women the tools to build and sustain that practice. They commit to those tools and that practice over and over again until the life they want isn’t something that’s “out there” — they’re living it.

No one is doing it for them. It is not dependent on their job / work culture.

Their relationship with their partner or spouse could be a train wreck and coasting on fumes, but they have enough self-respect to figure out what they need to cultivate within themselves to move forward. They don’t leave their mental well-being in the hands of other people. 

This is the kind of stuff I’ll be talking about on the Body of Work information call on Friday, June 3rd, at 12:00 PM EST. If you’d like to join me and the other attendees, it’s free.

Here’s how it works: 

Dial the number for the call on June 3rd is (605) 562-3140. You will be prompted to enter an access code, which is: 596174.

You can listen and ask questions or you may simply listen in; the choice is yours.

Don’t let your fear drive you if you show up on this call and have a burning question. Ask yourself how you want to feel and let it be your guide. There’s no way you can fail.

See you tomorrow!