Thought by thought . . .

Hey there. Glad you’re back. Hope this post finds you well.

Take a pause with me from all the holiday huggabaloo to continue with the conversation from yesterday, where I blogged about breaking up with fear.

You’ll recall I refused to open the mental door and let her (the voice of fear) her enter my home.

And you’ll recall I meditated, got calm, and shunned her attempts to lure me and sway me to her perspective.

And now, I’m realizing I need to give you more than just saying “shut the door on fear and its attempts to manipulate our choices.”

Shutting the door works in the moment. It’s a solution for that moment. But it is not a long term solution.

Turns out, we can’t just close the door on fear and say ‘good riddance’ indefinitely.

Fear isn’t a bag of trash that gets pitched to the dumpster, out-of-sight, out-of- mind.

Fear is not a hand me down you drop off to Goodwill, never to see again.

Turns out we can’t just will it away either.

But what we can do is develop a conscious awareness of what’s going on in our thoughts on a regular basis so we’re able to detect the ploys of fear more readily.

And we can detect patterns of thinking and see how often we cave or how often we stand our ground.

And more, I wanna offer this:

Ready? Big “aha” coming (drum roll….) 🙂

We can’t get ‘rid’ of fear.

It’s not get rid-able. It’s un-thinkable.

We don’t get rid of fear.

We un-think it.

Pause….

Lemme repeat:

We can’t get ‘rid’ of fear.

It’s not get rid-able. It’s un-thinkable.

We don’t get rid of it.

We un-think it.

Meaning:

We stop thinking fear.

We stop thinking with it.

We stop thinking about it.

We stop anticipating it, worrying about it, conversing with it.

We stop thinking fear.

We stop letting ourselves dwell on what fear suggests.

We stop ruminating or listening to the doubts, the what ifs the shoulda’s, woulda’s or coulda’s.

We un-think fear.

We stop standing in awe of it.

We stop keeping ourselves stewing and running from it.

We stop giving it power.

We stop letting it control our lives.

We stop letting it motivate our choices.

We stop letting it determine your moments.

We stop letting it navigate our now.

We un-think it.

Fear is a mindset, a bad habit and like any bad  habit, it can be broken.

We can choose to stop thinking fear, stop giving it the stage, stop letting it steer our choices.

It take practice to pause, shake thoughts, realize when we’re giving fear attention.

But it’s doable.

And essential.

And it takes practice to discern the patterns fear will try to impose in our lives.

But it’s doable.

And essential.

This isn’t a quickie bandaid:  “Just un-think fear and you’ll be good to go.”

This is a life practice.

But it’s a simple doable we can take with us and start to use right now.

So how bout it?

Wanna unthink fear with me?

Let’s give it go.

Holler back in the comments if you have anything you want to add.

What works for you to un-think fear?