“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
Are you living the life of your dreams? If so, Congratulations! If not, what is holding you back? Take a deep breath and get honest with yourself. Again, what is holding you back from the biggest, most exciting adventure you can take by living the life of your dreams?
I can only imagine the answers you are coming up with – and I bet they all boil down to one thing: the F-word. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about FEAR. It’s such a small, 1-syllable, 4-letter word. It sounds harmless enough. But most people give fear so much power, I feel like it should be a daunting, hard to pronounce word with 5- syllables and end in “itis” or “osis” like some chronic disease.
Fear. I have also heard the acronym for FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. I question that though because to me fear feels like a feeling in my body – an emotion that feels incredibly real. But, am I fearing the emotion of fear, or the result of something bad happening if I walk through the emotion of fear and do that thing I want to do?
My vast personal experience with fear is that it has kept me standing on the sidelines in my comfort zone countless times. I also know that when I’ve identified that I’m fearing the emotion of fear itself and pushed myself past the edge of my comfort zone, that’s where the magic happens.
My biggest fear is what my life will look like if I don’t face my fears and do that which scares me. I don’t want to get to the end of my life with a long list of “What if I would haves?” or “I should haves”. That fear is the one that propels me forward and in doing the things that scare me.
So what does living the life of your dreams look like to you? Does it bring up fear to even ask yourself that? I encourage you to examine that question and journal about it. For me journaling is a powerful tool to help me gain clarity. Go big. What does the life of your dreams look like? Are you living it in the here and now? Are you boldly being you in all areas of your life?
For 18 years, I have been dreaming about supporting women in healing what blocks them from living the lives of their dreams. I believe it is my soul’s purpose. Yet, I am just now stepping out and going for it by creating the Beautifully Blissed community. That speaks volumes about the amount of fear that accompanied that dream. I put that dream on hold for a long time. I had a gazillion reasons (aka excuses based on big, huge FEAR) why it would not work or why now is not the right time.
I spent the past 13 years working as a business manager of a dental practice. I loved my job. I loved my co-workers and our patients. I love to build relationships and I believe it is one of my gifts. 13 years is a long time to stay in one job. I never thought it was possible that I could be happy doing the same job for that length of time, but my co-workers and our patients became like family to me and I enjoyed it.
Yet, there were countless times over those 13 years that my soul would nudge me about my heart’s true desire. I would tell myself I was not ready to take that challenge on so I would take another spiritual class or explore a new, scary hobby to prepare me to answer my soul’s calling…later.
Don’t get me wrong, all of those classes and hobbies were challenging me to do things that were stretching me and causing me to confront my fears. They were all guiding me to this moment, right here, right now.
I just celebrated my 50th birthday and I did so with a bang. Milestone birthdays are a time that I look back and reflect on the question, “Am I where I want to be, doing what I love, living the life of my dreams?” This question came up for me in January and I knew that it was time for me to stop playing small and to create Beautifully Blissed. I nervously turned in my resignation in March and my last day in dentistry was my 50th birthday. I thought that day was the perfect day for me to close that chapter of my life and start my next one. So here I am at 50 years old, putting my heart and soul into this new expression of myself.
You better believe I am scared. Fear is present every day. When I feel it, I take a deep breath, acknowledge it, and tell the doubting thoughts, “Thank you for sharing”. Then I put one foot in front of the other and courageously step through each feeling of fear.
My commitment to myself is to be authentic in everything that I do, write, speak, and teach. I feel exposed and vulnerable, but I know that to be brave and confront my fears I must be willing to be. I have heard it said many times that we teach what we most need to learn. Yep. Every day I remind myself that if by sharing my journey of following my heart helps just one person, then I am living the life of my dreams.
Stepping into our fears to follow our hearts always requires vulnerability. Yes, you will feel scary feelings of fear along with way and you will have your fair share of failures. Failures are good. I promise, they are. Failures mean that you stepped through your fears and took action on your dream. I have to constantly remind myself I can’t improve on what I don’t do.
There are enormous benefits to facing our fears. My favorite is how proud I am of myself for doing so. Each time I face a fear and bravely go for it, I feel more empowered and have more confidence in myself. I feel like Superwoman.