Overcoming Sneaky Fears

Some (if not all) of the fears I’ve expressed in previous posts were pretty sneaky. They convinced me they weren’t from fears. They dolled themselves up and pointed to other observations, events and morals as their causes. Over my life I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I am the way I am. I thought I had myself all figured out. I always had a deep desire to fix myself and my life. While I was maybe 90% correct in my conclusions, there was still the fear I was denying that probably seeded those issues in me, and everything else just sculpted it and fine-tuned it into what it is today. Sneaky! I’d look back on my life and say, “This is why I am like this now.” Well, that was partially true, but it just goes a little farther back than that. There was one more layer I had to remove to really understand it and get to the core of the problem. The Untethered Soul, my ex, and my open-mindedness and desire to live a better life finally helped me to shed that final layer and stare the cause right in the face.

One of the fears I’m most pleased to deal with is my issue with my physical appearance. Identifying that I have probably been undermining all my efforts by a deeply-rooted belief that I will fail has given me a new sense of confidence. Now I honestly believe I can do it. I didn’t even realize I doubted myself before, but now I see it. My mind was a double-agent pretending to push me to get healthy while it secretly sabotaged everything. I usually don’t eat that much, and I don’t eat unhealthy, but I don’t eat great, either. I generally stick to some sort of chicken and rice type meal, and salads every so often. Bland and boring. I think that was maybe punishment. My mind was telling me, here, eat this. You can’t have anything awesome because you look like crap. This is healthy enough. But really, it wasn’t. I wasn’t getting many fruits or vegetables. I ended up being vitamin D deficient, and recently iron deficient, too. So I bought carrots, spinach, squash, zucchini and a bunch of other things at the grocery store the other day. I experimented with different combinations and cooked a few meals that were delicious. I think I had spinach every single day last week. Without even thinking about it! How awesome is that? I got back into drinking that green juice smoothie stuff that has the super foods spirulina and chlorella. Right this very second I’m cooking some chicken that was marinated in this Hawaiian marinade, and I’m going to prepare a mango kiwi salsa to go on it. I’m not even sure what was keeping me from doing this before. I just have this new desire to do it. Hopefully it isn’t temporary – well I’ll just have to use my will-power if it tries to go away!

Acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step. Finding the root of the problem is the second step. And I almost feel like, that’s it! Once you really truly find the real problem, after peeling back all of the layers, the wisdom seems to remove all the road blocks. Some issues take a little effort to talk yourself through and remind yourself what’s going on, but it isn’t as challenging as trying to cope when you didn’t understand what was happening, and put your focus on all the wrong things.

I feel so free!

What sneaky double-agent fears do you have?