Human beings are always creating. Always. We are either creating more of what we do want or more of what we don’t want. Creating what we do want happens when a person intentionally aligns their subconscious mind to bring about a consciously desired outcome. Creating what we don’t want happens when we unintentionally leave the subconscious mind—with all of its old programs, limitations and fears—out of alignment with a consciously desired outcome. A mind divided in this way can only produce more of what a person doesn’t want, leading to confusion and frustration. That’s how powerful the mind is—it will unconsciously create very real situations we don’t want when we’re not intentionally harnessing and aligning it with what we do want.
Here’s an everyday example of how powerful the mind is: consider how many times you have driven a familiar route—say from home to work or school—and you’ve done it basically on autopilot. Really, you drive from point A to point B totally checked out or lost in thought. But while your conscious mind is otherwise occupied, who is driving the car? It’s your subconscious. Your subconscious mind is that the part of your brain that can be brought into alignment with your conscious desires in order to help you create more of what you do want, and less of what you don’t.
Realizing Your Dreams by Reimagining Fear
The subconscious mind is really the workhorse of creation. It will go in whatever direction you steer it toward, which is why you must consciously send it in the direction you want to move in. Attempting to create anything without aligning the subconscious mind to the conscious desire is like driving a car forward while looking out the back window. You’ll introduce confusion into your life and get further and further from where you want to be. So if you find you’re struggling or frustrated in some aspect of creativity or living your dream, it suggests you just don’t have the subconscious alignment to support it.
How do you realign your subconscious properly? First notice the areas of your life where you create with ease and effectiveness; that comes from your subconscious programming to support what you desire. You’re already experiencing the power of alignment on those levels. Next, identify any place you’re experiencing struggle and ineffectiveness; right there will be old programs, limitations and fears that are out of alignment with what you want. They need to be dealt with to create a congruent mind that’s at peace, rather than one that is literally at war with itself. Creating alignment and congruency within oneself first is the foundation for all other creation, because we can only ever create from who we are.
Dealing with fear will be vital for creating alignment and congruency within yourself. Most self-development conversations focus on what to do to eliminate, overcome or leverage fear. The real secret to dealing with fear, however, is not in what you’re doing with it but instead in who you’re being with it. Fear is simply a response to perceived threat. If a person is walking down the street and someone holds a real gun to them, they will likely perceive that as threatening and experience fear. If a person is walking down the street and someone holds an obviously toy gun to them, they would likely perceive that as nonthreatening and experience no fear, maybe even laugh at it. When it comes to creating a life you’re excited to live, moving out of your comfort zone can be perceived by the survival brain as an incredible threat. And that perception comes from what you’re telling yourself about who you are in light of the situation. It might be, “I don’t have enough money,” “If I fail it will be awful,” or “I’m not enough.” Michael Niell says, “We’re not afraid of what we think we’re afraid of. We’re afraid of what we think.” Thoughts and perceptions are the stories you tell yourself about what is and isn’t possible. You’re not actually afraid of the situation, you’re afraid of the story you’re telling about it. And it’s usually some version of “I’m not okay” or “I won’t be okay if _______.” Just notice that. A great question to ask whenever you experience fear is, “How am I seeing myself and the situation that I feel afraid right now?” You can also ask, “How would I need to see myself and the situation so that it doesn’t look like a threat?”
I had a client once who was in the process of deciding to work with me. She struggled to pull the trigger and say yes. With an amazing dream she wanted to fulfill, she had the time and money to invest but still she hesitated. She said, “I know that in order to do this, I’m gonna have to show up for myself in a way I’ve never done before. And that scares me to death.” She wasn’t scared about showing up in a new way; she was scared of her story about showing up in a new way. When she really looked at it, she decided that particular story wasn’t moving her toward the opportunity in front of her and she dropped it. When she dropped the story, the fear vanished.
One of the best antidotes to fear is action. Taking action now by moving in the direction of what you want will dispel most fears. What keeps you stuck is staying in your head, trying to figure it all out and worrying about how it might go wrong. Steve Chandler says, “Worry is a terrible use of the imagination.” Be in action now, not tomorrow. Have you ever done anything tomorrow? Of course not. Your only access to action is now. You may try to convince yourself that you can’t step until you know how, but most of the time, you won’t know how until after you step. The very information you want to collect is being held back as long as you wait, and will often show up only when you are in motion. This is what it means when people say, “Take the step and the path will appear.”
Comedian Kyle Cease has said that when afraid to take a leap, people only measure what they’ll lose; rarely do they measure what they’ll gain. I agree. What if you spent at least as much emotional, mental, physical and spiritual energy focused on what you’ll gain from the opportunity in front of you? You really don’t need more faith. You have all the faith you’ll ever need. Really—you’ve just got it focused on what you don’t want. Because fear is faith in what you don’t want. When you focus your faith energy on what you do want, nothing is left to feed the fear, and fear will fade back into nothing.
Until you’ve created that which is most important to you, you don’t have your own life. You have an inherited life. Most people are resigned to having an inherited life. It’s familiar and comfortable, with the added illusion of being safer. But entrepreneurs and creatives are just not okay with that. They have tasted the aliveness that can only be experienced when leaving the comfort zone and pushing into unknown territory to bring something into existence that isn’t already here, which is why effectively dealing with fear is crucial to your life. Because creating something new means working without much agreement or evidence around you to validate your idea. Especially in the beginning. This is one of the reasons that great innovations and achievements face inordinate opposition initially. These advances force the Inherited-Life-Comfort-Zone-Seekers to consider the unfamiliar, and they always resist that. So it’s your privilege to see what’s possible way before anyone else does, and then invite people into that new possibility in a way that it looks like an opportunity instead of a threat. You get to create it all. The person that does this kind of work, with patience, intention and commitment is unstoppable.
Written by Becky Henderson
