The Fear of Putting Yourself Out There - Christine Kane

Confession: I am always scared to put myself out there. I am never not nervous to step on a stage. I’m always jittery when I hit send, publish, post, record… you name it. Always.

I’m not supposed to admit that. (Whoops.) In fact, if you and I follow all the success gurus? We’re supposed to crush fear, kill fear, and smash fear. Or better yet, act like we don’t have any!

Well here’s the deal. You can clear the fear and move forward!

So in today’s episode, I’m amping. that. shit. up. We’re gonna deep dive into this crazy fear that stops WAY too many people in their tracks.  

First, we’ll talk about the phases and scenarios when it likes to rear its ugly head. Then I’ll break down the untruths about this particular niggly fear. And last I’m going to share how I teach my clients to move through it so it loses its tight grip.

Episode Transcript

And at some point, if you remain committed to the thought, I shouldn’t have this feeling, you will end up face first in a bag of peppermint bark, thins. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I have that t-shirt, that’s where that untruth is going to take you like this should not be here.

Welcome to the Soul-SourcedTM Podcast, unconventional business advice for the highly creative secretly sensitive and wildly ambitious entrepreneur. I’m your host, Christine Kane. Let’s do this.

Welcome to episode seven. And in this episode, we are going to work through what I call the number one fear of the entrepreneur and solo business owner. And that is the fear of being seen in all the ways that you have to quote unquote, put yourself out there. That’s how a lot of people like to talk about it. But by virtue of the fact that you have a business, whether it’s big or small, you will be putting yourself out there in ways that feel big or small and only, you know, what bigger, small looks like and feels like to you, because what might seem small to one person may be huge to someone else, whether that is going to your first networking event, sending an email series, writing articles or blog posts, and posting them, making a presentation or hosting your first retreat or your first workshop, offering your first event of some sort hosting a live webinar, making a video, writing a book, you get the idea.

The core fear can be all around, being seen in a way that you lose control. Once it goes out there, you are now open and vulnerable. And this isn’t something that gets talked about in terms of the entrepreneur in business circles. Very often, it’s like no one wants to admit their own vulnerability or they don’t even want to consider that fear. Is there at least I would say, not in any real way. So in success circles and in the business world, there’s a lot of kind of fear, phobic messaging. Everyone’s scared of being scared. And when you look at it deeply, it’s actually all kind of violent. Like, you know, we’re told, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, or you eat that frog. And what is it about eating things and eating like cute things that make you sad.

Or recently I saw someone’s Instagram post about how writing is scary and it’s terrifying and it’s really hard, but you should just get in there and smash keys every day. Like aggressions seems to be the only answer that we’ve come up with to this very real and vulnerable and often vital feeling inside of fear. In fact, here’s, here’s a little tidbit for you. When I was in the process of working on the title and subtitle of my book, there was a lot of back and forth with different teams of people from publisher and some of my peers and a lot of thoughts being tossed out there on my title and subtitle. And so my book is called the Soul-SourcedTM Entrepreneur. It’s not out yet. It’s coming out in November of 2020, depending on when you’re listening to this and you can preorder it on Amazon, but the subtitle, an unconventional success plan for the highly creative secretly sensitive and wildly ambitious.

And you guys, I was really struck by how many people, some at the publishing company, some who are well known coaches, some who are hardcore entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs out there who told me, you know, I like the subtitle. I just don’t like the sensitive part. Don’t keep that. But I kept it because in my experience behind closed doors, everyone, even the most kick assiest of us is sensitive in some way.

But this whole idea of being sensitive as something that we are conditioned in this world of entrepreneurship and business, you know, however you describe your work, we’re conditioned to repel ourselves from it. You know, don’t admit that and then you’ll be vulnerable and there’s no place for that here in business. You know, go make Daisy chains and sing kumbaya. You want to talk about sensitivity. So if that’s you, if you’re someone who would say something like that, then you’re probably not going to like this episode. And you probably don’t even like this podcast and you’re not even here, but if you ended up here, go back to smashing keys and eating elephants, but don’t tell me if you eat an elephant. Cause then I’ll cry big time. Cause I love elephants.

So in the spirit of being real, my confession is this. I am always scared to put myself out there. I’m always nervous to step on a stage. I’m nervous before I do a podcast. I’m nervous when I hit send or publish or poster record or whatever it is always. I never, I never sit back and think whatever man, you know, it’s all good. The difference now is that I’ve done it so much that I can ultimately see through the untruth of that fear of those thoughts of those energies. I don’t see them as bad anymore, even though they feel bad.

In fact, I, I use them. I use them to look more deeply and say, uh, here you are again, sort of like Finnegan right now, here you are again, what’s here for me to understand or release or whatever it is. What are you here to teach me? And this is what it looks like to be what I call a soul sourced entrepreneur. And yeah, sometimes doing that. Sometimes this activity is inconvenient in an industry where everyone is just rushing, but everything. And I mean, everything is fodder for you for your expansion, for your truth and for the service of others and even for the service of your own soul. And that includes fear. And in this episode, I want to look at the specific type of fear, what I call the number one fear that entrepreneurs have to walk through. And that is the fear of being seen of putting yourself out there, whatever you want to call it.

We’re going to break this into three session sections here. First. I want to talk about what this is and when it shows up. And then I want to bust through a few of the untrue messages about this fear that I’ve seen stopped my clients in their tracks or attempt to stop them in their tracks. And these are all the bullshit things that you don’t even realize you believe that have no basis in reality whatsoever. I want to rattle those chains a bit and create some wiggle room for you. And then I’m going to share some of the ways that you can move through the fear and be seen anyway, and then use this for your own growth, your own expansion. And no, I’m not a therapist. I am a coach. I am speaking from experience here, not from any kind of certification or studying that has happened in an official academic setting.

If fear is a driving force for you, then I do encourage that you do consider getting professional help because healing this stuff, especially if shame is part of that scene healing, it is really profound and it’s often necessary work and I don’t care how successful you are. It if it’s there, it’s there to be healed. So let’s begin with what fear is and when it shows up in the trajectory of business ownership, because it’s not necessarily an easy thing to name or identify when it’s happening.

So here’s a few examples based on the different phases of business. And I talked about the phases of business in our last episode, that was episode number six. And so depending on the phase you’re in, this is the way this kind of fear might show up for you. So one scenario might be when someone is already successful and is making a big, bold new move.

And I’m sharing this one first, because last week I was coaching a client on zoom and she was literally, she showed up on zoom trembling. You could see her body trembling with fright. And I will tell you, this is not someone who struggles with fear. In fact, this is a very strong and powerful woman with a very, very successful consulting business, but she had just turned in her book manuscript to her editor. And all of a sudden you could say shit got real. She was terrified in that feeling. She was just not familiar with. She was really uncomfortable. She felt super vulnerable. Then she was telling me that she thought she should feel excited at this point, she should celebrate. But instead she had tears in her eyes and she was shaking and her insides felt like they were now on the outsides exposed for all to see. So that’s one example.

And another example is a common one among our clients. And this is when someone finally decides to stop hiding behind their certifications and degrees. And they start actually, you know, marketing themselves for reals, like in a situation like this, when someone has spent years getting certified in pretty much everything, what often is going on is that they think that the certifications and the degrees are, are going to be what gets them clients, but it hasn’t. And now they have to discover who they are behind all those certifications. What’s their voice. What’s their message. And they, I got to email people and tell them about their business. And this can be super terrifying. They had been really living by the illusion that the degrees would do the talking for them and that the degrees would be the being seen part. But when that doesn’t work, which it rarely does, they have to then put themselves out there. And it’s terrifying.

Another example is when someone is brand new to business and they have to post their first blog or make their first video, or do their first Facebook live or do their first show, launch their website. And they have this sort of gnawing fear that, you know, suddenly everyone’s going to call them out as a fraud, anytime they’re seen in front of people. So it doesn’t matter what level you’re at. Anytime you stretch out of your comfort zone, anytime you do something new and big, you’re opening yourself up to this idea of being exposed.

And one last example I’m going to use here though. There are tons of examples that I could use is when somebody finally just puts who they are in their marketing. So I’ll give an example. I had a client who was a therapist she’d worked with me for years and she finally realized that she needed to include her Christianity in her website copy. She was terrified because she, she called herself sorta, she said, I’m an Ann Lamont Christian, meaning like I’m cool and liberal I’m hip. I’m not like judgemental, but she had so much fear of being judged just for her spirituality. And it was a really big deal to put that in her copy, in her message.

Uh, another client of mine. Well, actually this has happened with a lot where suddenly someone starts realizing I need to start putting the fact that I use intuitive readings. And I, I, even though I’m a marketer, I use energy kind of stuff. That’s a little more out there. They’ll hide that stuff when they’re in business. And then they realize they can’t keep hiding and they have to share that this is part of their work with people. So like I said, some of these can feel big. Some of these can feel like little tiny things, but it doesn’t matter because if it feels big to you, then it’s big and where it all tends to lead in our head. That is a whole round of what if thoughts? What if nobody comes? What if it’s crickets and no one responds? What if they laugh? What if they criticize? What if everyone sees the real me? What if I’m unsuccessful? If I’m successful? You know, in other words, what if my whole cover is blown and I can’t control this thing called my life or my business anymore. In some ways the real question behind this for me is what kind of world we created when we’re also busy hiding our real selves.

Anyway, man, and I know that’s a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day, but when it comes to this idea of what if I will just hand off to you something that one of my mentors does. And she just sort of makes, what if not allowed? You know, she, if you say, what if in her office, she will just simply say, you know, what, what ifs aren’t allowed in here. That’s her rule? So we’ll do say no what ifs, because all the, what ifs are just making movies of the future. And we have no idea what’s going to happen. And it’s just a way of avoiding the fear and avoiding taking action.

So one of the things that I will say about my, my little journey of being an indie musician and anyone who’s ever been an independent musician knows this. You learn the discipline of showing up no matter what, because even though I was successful in my own, right, as a songwriter, the reality of being an independent songwriter and having your own record label and going on tour is that some nights are phenomenal and you have hundreds of people in the audience and then all kinds of encores. And then the next night you end up in a town where no one knows you. There’s 12 people in the audience and you have to kind of learn like your entire practice is that this is what you do. You just put yourself out there because this is how it is If you want to be a musician at this level. And every, what if I ever had at the start of my music career ultimately happened and I lived through it.

So let’s move into the second part of this. And let’s talk about some of the false messages that we tell ourselves in the face of this fear of being seen, because there are tons and let’s go ahead and dig them up and expose them for what they are.

Untruth Number one Is other people don’t, get scared. And this is called comparing your insides to someone else’s outsides. Part of why I share a client story so much is that people have pretty much told me that they can’t even imagine why I would get scared given that I’ve done this so much, I’ve done this so long. I’ve had my business for forever and they don’t believe that I have fear. And this is called a projection. Someone is comparing their insides to my outsides. Um, someone’s experience of me is that I have no fear. So therefore they make it. So, and it brings to mind, there’s this episode of the West wing, where Toby Ziegler, who is the white house communications director is in the oval office with president Jed Bartlet, who is played by Martin sheen. And Toby has been waging this ongoing kind of battle to try to get Bartlett, to stop playing small, to stop hiding under a phony act.

And Toby does this really beautiful speech. And he just says, you know, you don’t, you’re a good father. You don’t have to act like it. You’re the president. You don’t have to act like it. You’re a good man. You don’t have to act like it. You’re not just folks are plain spoken. Do not do not. And I watched West wing enough. I can quote a directly, do not act like it. And then Jed Bartlet, the Martin sheen character just kind of size and collapses into this like little hump. And he says, I don’t want to be killed. And I know this is fictional TV drama, but it speaks to the ways that we all fear exposing ourselves and who we truly are to the world. And at the end, there’s this core of like this death, this ego death. And it happens at every level of business. It happens wherever you are. And I think it does happen, especially when you have been successful being one way for so long. And then another direction starts to make itself known.

Untruth number two is I shouldn’t have this feeling at all. So all suffering, if you’ve studied any kind of spirituality or Buddhism or anything like that, all suffering comes in some roundabout way from this thought, the thought that says, this should not be here. Well, it’s here. And now on top of the pain, you’re judging yourself for having it. Buddhists would call this the second arrow. The first arrow being the pain itself. The second arrow is the thoughts all about the pain, the judgments of the pain. And at some point, if you remain committed to the thought, I shouldn’t have this feeling. You will end up face first in a bag of peppermint bark, thins.

I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I have that t-shirt but, and maybe your thing is embark thins, but whatever your particular go-to addiction is or distraction is that’s where that untruth is going to take you, like this should not be here. And anytime you try to avoid something that is there by saying it shouldn’t be there. That’s what that kind of is what jettisons us into our worst behaviors.

Untruth number three is this feeling means I shouldn’t do this. All this feeling means is that you have this feeling and for now that’s it. And a good rule of thumb is that you should never interpret a feeling when you are caught in that feeling. When you are in that feeling, it’s an old, messy pattern. That’s now trying to coach you. You don’t want to be coached by old messy patterns.

Untruth number four is this thing I’m doing is silly and small. I shouldn’t be scared of something so silly and small. And one reason I decided to go ahead and do that whole episode on the five phases of the entrepreneur, which was episode six, is because everyone needs to understand the level of growth where they find themselves. And at each level you will have new things that take you out of your comfort zone. If you’ve never written an article, that’s your thing, silly, small. So be it, that’s your thing. The word should, the judgment of the fear again, is the real problem here.

Untruth number five is I’ve already done so much and I’m already successful. I shouldn’t get scared now. And this one is based in the illusion that there is some arrival point where our evolution and expansion just stops and we’ll never feel fear again. And cabana boys will then bring us endless rounds of umbrella drinks. Again, the suffering here comes from the judgment of the fear, not the fear itself. I am too strong for this. Well, apparently you’re not.

Untruth number six is I need to figure out why I am so scared. And that will make me unscarred, trying to figure out why you’re scared is a lot like showing up at the psych ward and asking one of the patients to be your therapist. In other words, fear is based in a million untrue thoughts. And now you’re going to rely on those untrue thoughts to help heal those untrue thoughts. And in the end, this is just thoughts, resisting thoughts, and figuring it out while it sounds like such a such a rational thing to do. And you know, you’ll, you’ll get there eventually, but all it does is that it helps you distract yourself for hours. You’re fondling your fear. It doesn’t take away the fear and it rarely leads to taking action.

And the last untruth number seven is that the fear is always all yours and yours alone. So here’s something I’m just going to put out there for you. And you can take this however you want. In my experience, when someone is experiencing a lot of fear prior to an event, for instance, maybe they are hosting some big webinars, maybe they’re hosting an event, and they’re really feeling a lot more fear than usual. I encourage them to consider that the fear they are experiencing, isn’t all their own fear. They’re actually tuning into the collective. And I know this is an entirely other conversation that maybe we will have here on this podcast, but for now consider the possibility that especially if you are in a leadership role or in a healer role, or you do regular work on you and your own healing, that part of that role is to be able to transmute some of the energy of the people that you serve and that you maybe have not mastered what that looks like yet, or you have, and you just need to pause and recognize it. Oh, this isn’t all mine. I’m tuning into something else here. In other words, this fear is not all yours.

So before we walk through ways to deal with the fear of being seen and putting yourself out there, let’s start by understanding the key thing about most of these untruths. And that is that the, the pain, the suffering that fear causes comes first from believing the thoughts that have led to the feeling. And then the second, and you’ll see this as a common thread in all of these is resisting the feeling and arguing with it in some way like this shouldn’t be here. So when it comes to the strategies for dealing with the fear of being seen, everyone wants an easy answer. Like we all wanted to just go the fuck away. And that is actually not something I can do for you. And I think in some ways, if I could do it for you, I would be robbing you of some very critical growth on your path.

From a strictly mental standpoint, there is one thing I can encourage you to consider. And then one thing that I’m going to remind you of the first thing the thing to consider is that fear is sometimes a sign that a little bit more preparation might need to be done. And I say this hesitantly, because I know that some of you are super researchers and fact finders, and that you’re going to say, Oh, thank God I get to go back and spin my wheels and all my preparations and more research, more fact finding. And that’s not what I mean here. What I mean is that let’s just say in the case of filming a video, making sure your message is clear might have to be done first. You know, maybe you need to make sure first that you have some structure for what you want to say.

So being seen is not, I’m not saying that you just turn on the camera and spout off, whatever comes out and hope to God, someone understands and wants to be your client and pay you the fear that you have could be pointing to some messaging preparation, some marketing preparation, knowing the overall purpose of the video series. You’re creating, bringing some clarity to the situation.

So sometimes there are some very practical steps that you can take to help you get more prepared. But at some point and, you know who you are at some point you have prepared enough and you’re ready and you have to just do the thing. And then the reminder that I want to put out there about all of this fear of being seen and being real and being, you know, open, is this more than ever in this algorithm, centric, artificial intelligence, driven, internet marketer, hype-y data focused, fake everything in the world.

The more people who are real and who share real messages, the better, you know, I love, and I refer to this all the time, Seth Godin in his book tribes, the subtitle of that book is we need you to lead us. It is so true. And I know that can sound very egoey, but I don’t think that’s the spirit that he puts it in there. And it’s not the spirit that I am encouraging you to consider it. You leading us means you being exactly who you are and leading us. And I know if it were that easy, if all I needed to do was just remind you of that, then no one would need a coach. We’d all, you know, we’ve all have each read one success book, one business book, one money book, one health book. And we would just all go back home and be rich and have all the sex.

So with that said, I am going to share how I coach people through this kind of fear throughout their entrepreneurial trajectory. And this is where I go through my own sort of a fear of being seen because I do this very differently from a lot of other coaches out there and a lot of other authors out there. And I’m not saying that their way is wrong or my way is right. I think there’s a lot of great books about getting over fear. And there’s a lot of ways of doing it. Now, a lot of times, what I’ve seen is that the tendency is to resist it so you can fight against it. You can work hard and you can move forward. What I’m really trying to do. And what I’m most interested in doing is helping people really step into a mode of self awareness where they’re, what they’re navigating is something that’s more organic and they’re able to trust themselves.

They’re being their body, their emotions more as they are building their business, not just fighting it and, you know, bullying their way through it. And so when it comes to any kind of emotional attacks, like fear and shame, and that sort of thing is that I take two angles of this. Then you may start seeing this as a theme for me that the first place I begin is proactive or creative and the second is reactive. And so the word creative and reactive, I always say to my clients, same letters, different spelling, entirely different objectives and or results, depending on what we’re working on. So the proactive strategies here, the creative strategies are habits that you, as a leader, as an entrepreneur commit to, and what this does is that it sets you up so that your mental, emotional, and physical substrate is set up in such a way that fear has as little chance as possible to run around telling stories that you then believe.

And to this end habits are your friend. And these are habits that will greatly diminish the power that fear or any emotion has to take hold on you because there is a presence. There, there is training there, and these are basic things, and I’m not going to spend a ton of time on these they’re there in and of themselves. We could talk about them, but I start with gratitude journal simply because reminding ourselves of the things we have accomplished of the things we do do of the things that are great really starts to train our brain out of reactionary thoughts and in, into a proactive habit of seeing what is working. This is why we begin every one of our retreats here at Uplevel with something I call the focus 360, where we really acknowledge what we have done, what we have accomplished, what we have, what insights we have gotten so that we remember not just to drive forward, but also to look around and celebrate what we’ve done.

Another habit is meditation, and I could go on and on about it. Again, there are plenty of way better teachers. I’m not a meditation teacher in any way, shape or form, but I, meditation is a practice that I highly recommend. If you want a great place to start the app, Headspace ,has helped a lot of my clients and I, I personally just began with a five minute meditation practice recommended by my friend, Susan Piver and then moved it to six minutes and moved it to seven. And then it grew into a whole very robust other thing. But what I do notice with meditation is that it starts to teach you that your thoughts are not truth, that they are just these rambling, ticker tape activities that go on that what’s happened is you’ve, you’ve trained yourself to collapse on them as if they are real and you believe them, and you make them a part of who you are. And what meditation does is that over time, it starts to show you that these don’t have the power.

Another proactive habit is any kind of exercise, any kind of weight training, any kind of yoga, whatever it is for you, but a regular habit of that. And that is that part of our, the thing about fear is that fear is up in the head. It is of the mind. It is thoughts about, about things and training and exercise. Get you fully in your body. Again, not for me to do that particular coaching for you, but it is a good one.

And last is just plain old Accountability. I’ve already spoken to this in how to get scary things done that episode of the podcast. You can go back and listen to that, but accountability just basically means you get the damn thing done. You do it. You put yourself out there and having a regular system of accountability, whether it’s with a coach or an accountability, buddy, starts to teach you that, Oh, guess what? I can do things in spite of fear I can be seen and I don’t die. And that, it’s just a very valuable thing to have on your side.

Okay. So no matter how much you proactively set yourself up, so that fear doesn’t derail you, we all know that there are times when it just fricking does. And that’s why I call these reactive strategies because they are meant to be done. Actually, it’s just mostly one, but it’s meant to be done when you’re consumed and no amount of rational thought is going to help you out of that feeling.

The first place I go, it’s pretty simple. It’s just honoring the fact that you are taking a big action, whether you’ve done the thing, and you’re now scared about having done it, or you’re about to do the thing you want to celebrate the action, not focus on the results. And what this means is calling someone that you trust, reaching out to someone that you trust and asking them to hear you and inviting them to celebrate with you, that you took this step. And that you’re about to take this step or whatever it might be. And acknowledge that as business owners, as leaders, we do things that are very raw and very real. And you simply want to celebrate yourself. I know this might sound like I’m going back to first grade, but it’s really important that this becomes a part of the way you honor yourself for the work you do, because you are every bit a part of your business as all your clients, all your team, all your vendors, et cetera, et cetera.

The second strategy in the little pool of reactive things is harder. And it’s not harder because it’s so hard to do. When in fact we like hard things to do. You don’t give us a good CrossFit workout and we’re all about it. This is hard because it won’t seem like it’s about achievement or working or getting them rid of this thing. When the fear is overtaking you, it’s going to be hard to remember this. But as a Soul-SourcedTM entrepreneur, you recognize that the stuff that comes up is actually there to wake you up, to teach you something, to reveal something. And now that doesn’t always mean that we go achieve this waking up. We don’t achieve inner peace. And this is the challenge of someone who is an achiever we want to achieve. And this strategy is alarmingly disappointing that I’m about to share with you because it doesn’t actually seem to achieve anything.

Especially if you approach it with your achiever self, what we want to do is experience something and that’s all. And so here’s what you do. This is my disappointing coaching for you. When the fear is there. If you can find your way to do this, you want to start by first setting a time on your phone or your watch. It’s a, it’s a time that you’re not going to be interrupted and it can be as little as five minutes. It can be 15 minutes. It can be 20 minutes. What we want to do is just first give some time for a pause. This is a pattern interrupt. And then you’re going to go sit somewhere and you’re going to be alone. You can do it on the floor of your bedroom. You can go sit in a bathroom somewhere. You can go off into a, you know, into the woods, but just start by breathing first.

And then all you’re going to do. If the fear has sort of gone away a little bit, you’ll call it toward you. Like you just call to it. You invite it. And you see if you can, with, with total curiosity, discover in your body where the feeling itself is. In fact, I’m not even going to call it a feeling. What if we just called it a sensation as if you’d like, maybe you walked outside in the cold and you felt the cold, or right now, as you’re listening, let’s say you put your thumb, you dig your thumb into the Palm of your hand. That’s a sensation. And that’s what I mean by this. Like fear is only fear when we label it fear. Otherwise it is simply a sensation. Like you digging your thumb into your Palm. And while you’re going to be doing here is just being with that sensation with curiosity, like, what is this?

And you’re going to do this without the label maker. If you can. I get that? It’s a big ask here without the label maker. That is your brain telling you that it’s fear. Like the minute we feel things, it tends to be that our brain goes into label maker mode like, Oh, there’s fear or there’s shame when actually what we’re doing is we’re exploring what is this thing? If I don’t give it a name, because the thing about this idea of fear is that you have felt this sensation a cajillion times in your life. You felt this sensation. When you gave an oral report in high school, you felt it. When you asked someone out on a date, you felt it, you know, at games when you were a soccer player or gymnast or whatever it might be, maybe you felt it on your wedding day.

All it is is that it sensation. And the only thing that makes it called fear is our label maker and our storyteller. And once those things get going, we have conditioned ourselves to start avoiding it, like, get this thing out of here. I do not tolerate fear. So what we’re doing is we’re seeing what happens when you just sit there and you see it and you experiencing it, experience it without all the labels. Then you see what it does. And I’m not going to tell you what happens. I’m not going to promise that it’ll go away because the energy of wanting to get rid of something is part of our challenge. What we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to be with it because part of why our fear grows and grows and ultimately rules us is because it feeds off of our resistance.

That’s what makes that get bigger. It actually enjoys our resistance and anyone who reads any kind of science fiction or fantasy knows that this is the plot of so many hero’s journeys and storylines. When we stop feeding the fear, when we stopped fondling the fear with all our stories and labels, it shifts the plot line changes, but don’t sit down as if the plot line is going to change. When I do this and achieve this thing, all we want to do is do a little pattern interrupt. And I want you to just simply experience the energy that you call fear and see what it does when you don’t curl yourself up into an energetic wad of resistance and try your best to fight it, avoid it or distract from it.

What I can tell you is that when I take a client through this on zoom, you will often not always, but often see it simply vanish. Like it’s not a thing anymore. Not because they fought to make it not a thing, but because when something is just allowed and seen with curiosity in our body, it stops gripping us. And anyone with kids knows that those emotional outbursts, they have, they clear so much more quickly. When you can sit with them, acknowledge the outburst, be with the outburst and not fight the outburst. Then they’re suddenly, they’re playing three minutes later.

So if this practice seems like a total bummer to you, because you wanted a way to get rid of fear forever, then I get it. All right. We live in a defended world. We fight against things. We don’t let ourselves experience anything. That is a natural part of the human experience. And there are plenty of strategies out there that you can use to fight fear. And my experience with my clients and with myself has been that when I can teach them, and now you, how to trust yourself instead of avoid yourself or constantly distract yourself, then that’s what starts to show you really reveal to you your real power and your real sense of autonomy.

And if fear is a thing for you, then likely your path is going to be a lot about trusting that there is something for your growth and expansion in that. And if that’s not your jam, and if you want to go eat frogs and elephants, you will find so much of that strategy out there and you can go for it. And at some level, those things do work. Okay, I get that, but try this way just a little bit and stay in touch with me. If you have questions for me, you can email podcast@christinekane.com or better yet. If you know someone who gets challenged by the fear of stepping up or being seen, or having a voice or putting themselves out there, then forward this podcast to them and start a conversation with them about that. Be each other’s encouraging voice on this path, cause we need more of that.

And thank you for listening to me, prod alone here. This is the Soul-sourcedTM Business Podcast. I am Christine Kane. Please take a moment to subscribe. And if you want the full big spectrum, wildly unconventional game plan on what it looks like and how to be a Soul-SourcedTM entrepreneur and what to do and how this looks. Then you can preorder my book on Amazon. It is called the Soul-SourcedTM Entrepreneur. It comes out in November of 2020, and thank you a bazillion times over to those people who have written to tell me they got it. That makes my day when you guys do that. Thank you. And I will see you all on the next episode.

As for me, I’ve had my demons beaten down my own back door breaking bad and talking me, spell it for me, for sure. But I propose we let them in Sit them down and raise a toast, get them drunk and leave. Those demons refused to be the host