All of a sudden, I found myself in a place without the paralyzing fear I had been feeling.
It was like oxygen in my lungs.
Euphoria. Ecstasy even.
Imagine life without fear.
Even just imagining this, brings you to a deep breath. Yes.
At first it was truly a surprising feeling but I was enjoying it.
And spending my days in this place had been awesome.
But as you know by now, I love to discover how change takes place.
Not only so I can understand my own journey but also so I can help others get there.
What truly takes place just before life changes?
How is any kind of change possible?
Especially for something as important as fear being gone, even if it is a short term experience.
I started to back track my steps.
By the way, today is the one month anniversary of our book, Where Did You Go?
This book has been the most liberating experience for me in this last decade.
As I was driving to work this morning, it hit me. I got it.
I know now why the fear was lifted.
It is as if I took all of my clothes off and ran around naked for a while and life was not so frightening anymore.
You are probably thinking, what in the world is she talking about?
Here she goes again.
But it really is the closest metaphor I can find.
When I came out with my new book which is truly the way I understand reality, ultimately the last piece of the puzzle of life after loss, I felt like I had to be without my clothes in front of a lot of people. Speaking my truth.
In the days prior to the book release I would go to bed at night and be so grateful tomorrow was so far away. 8 hours away. That’s how scared I was.
And look at me now, maybe still standing there without my outfit and being ok with it.
So, here are a few things to remember about fear and how to live without it.
1. Anticipating taking your clothes off may be more scary than actually doing it. Thinking about fear takes much longer time than being afraid. Being afraid is mostly short lived.
3. When you wait in anticipation of fear, the waiting becomes anxiety. Paralysis. Then it moves to shame. Hiding. Forgetting what you were supposed to do to begin with. Amnesia sets in.
4. And who you were supposed to become, becomes someone else’s destiny. Yes, you read right. We can miss out on our destiny. By prolonging the clothes removal. By being afraid to be in our boldness. Destiny needs expression and a vessel to express itself. If you are not going to say yes to it, it will go and find another expresser, carrier. Creator.
5. Destiny is part of the collective to begin with. And it distributes itself accordingly. I remember years ago an interview Elizabeth Gilbert did on the show On Being, where she talks about how she didn’t write a fictional story she was supposed to, and it found its way to someone else. The exact same story. Someone else wrote it. So be sure that you really do want to stay in the waiting room, the hiding, the anticipation of fear. Because your destiny, your plan, your dream, your wish will go to someone else who is ready to go out into the wild and look fear in the eyes.
As for me, I realized that running around naked did not kill me. It gave me my destiny. It made me me. It liberated me. It allowed for all the things I was holding in to be expressed.
With no clothes,
Christina
