Your Deepest Fear

This article is also available in audio format in the latest episode (#33) of my podcast The Abundant Entrepreneur, if you prefer to listen. You may also find episode #25: Doing the Scary Thing (18 minutes) helpful.

There’s a well known quote from a passage called “Our Deepest Fear”. written by Marianne Williamson, that you may be familiar with:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness. That most frightens us”.

Whilst I think there’s an element of truth to this (more on that shortly), I have a different perspective, based on my 45 years of life experience, and coaching conversations with hundreds of people.

What I’ve learnt is that our deepest fears are: fear of uncertainty; fear of conflict with others; fear of illness injury or death (generally this doesn’t show up on a regular day to day basis); And, the most common and destructive one of all is what others think of us, or how they will react, which is at root, a FEAR OF POSSIBLE REJECTION. This is what had paralysed me throughout much of of my life, and is the focus on this article.

Here’s a few examples of how the fear of rejection (the flip side off which is a desire for approval, acceptance and belonging) can show up:

• We go along with what others want or say yes to things we don’t really want to do, to please or keep the peace
• We keep our true feelings, thoughts and opinions to ourself so as not to be criticised, challenged or create any potential conflict
• We avoid conversations with potential clients because they might say no to working with us
• We obsess about doing things perfectly without any error to avoid judgement and criticism
• We post on social media for attention and approval (obsession with likes and comments)
• We avoid doing new things and taking risks to avoid judgement and criticism
• We over-explain and over-justify ourselves so we won’t be thought of negatively

You may be thinking “well not all of these are necessarily about fear of rejection”, but I assure you, through further exploration and drilling down, it always comes down to that in some way.

Back to Marianne’s quote. Being authentic and realising our potential, is not in itself the fear. However, it does mean possible forms of rejection. And this fear is why most people are not truly fulfilled and get to the end of their life not having fully lived and haven’t realised their potential, and find themselves with regrets.

There’s a book I read called “The 5 regrets of the dying” by Bronnie Ware, who was a palliative care nurse, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies and saw that 5 common themes surfaced again and again, which she divulges in her book. Of the 5 regrets, there are 2 which are particularly relevant to the topic at hand.

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. "This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled".

I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

Lets dig a little deeper into fears…

What is a fear and how do we know we have a fear or are fearful? Think about that for a moment, before you read on. Can you answer that question? Have you ever really thought about it?

What follows is an excerpt from a coaching dialogue I recently had with a client of mine who wanted to host an event, doing something he’s genuinely passionate about, but kept avoiding inviting people to it:

Steve: I’m feeling so much resistance. Whenever I start thinking about it, or go to do it, I get the fear and stop.

Me: Ok, close you eyes and think about putting the invite out. Describe the physical sensations that are occurring within your body and where they are.

Steve: Tightness, like constriction in my solar plexus and chest. That sick nauseous kind of feeling in my tummy. A kind of jittery feeling rising up from my gut through my throat. A bit weak and wobbly, almost light headed.

[Note: most people live from the neck up and are so disconnected from their bodies, they struggle to articulate physical sensations. Steve and I had already worked on this hence he was able to articulate it.]

Me: Well articulated. And you’re giving those felt sensations a label of “fear”, right?

Steve: Yup

Me: How did you learn to label these sensations fear? Why not anger or joy? And how did you learn that fear is a “bad” thing?

Steve: Gosh I don’t know, I just know its fear and I don’t like it (laughs)

(Long pause) I must have been taught it I guess

Me: Yup, through parental and societal conditioning we are taught to label certain scenarios and felt sensations as certain emotions. What is the imagery and mental narrative that comes up when you think about inviting people to this event?

Steve: No one will be interested, or they’ll say they are but then no one will turn up, and if they turn up I might mess up and say or do the wrong thing, or they won’t enjoy it.

Me: Ok, so my understanding from what you’ve said is that you’re imagining these things that could potentially happen, which is creating felt sensations in your body, which aren’t pleasant

Steve: Pretty much

Me: OK, so would it be fair to say that what you’re actually wanting to avoid, by not doing this event, is simply uncomfortable feelings?

Steve: (laughs) Oh God yeah. So its literally just my unwillingness to feel discomfort, thats holding me back

Me: (laughs) Yup

Steve: I’ve never really thought about it in this way before. It seems so stupid

Me: It’s not stupid at all. Its natural. Your system is trying to “protect” you because the situation, or thoughts of what could happen, remind your system of something traumatic from the past and / or it senses a threat to your safety. But it’s not actually a true threat. So in trying to protect you, your system is actually sabotaging your success. And its everyone Steve. The only reason humans avoid doing anything that they want to do, is because they are unwilling to experience emotional discomfort, and in some cases they don’t even have the nervous system capacity to do so.

Steve: (laughs) well I feel better knowing that

Ultimately, what stops us from being our authentic selves, being truly fulfilled, and realising our full potential, is our unwillingness to feel the pain/discomfort that may arise through this very process.

Let’s dig even deeper….

Fear of possible rejection (and the other fears I mentioned for that matter), is really about feeling safe, which is ultimately about survival.

The desire to feel safe and survive, is the primary (unconscious) driver of most human behaviour.

As humans, we tend to fear anything that we perceive may threaten the survival of our physical life OR our ego/identity. This is why people will often fight for their conditioned beliefs and limitations, get emotionally triggered when someone has a different perspective or belief, and won’t open their mind to the possibility of being “wrong” about something, or change their mind. And boy of boy haven’t we seen this in full swing, especially over the past few years, and especially on social media.

When it comes to fear of rejection, we have a bit of a predicament … connection and belonging with other humans IS a fundamental human need. Being authentic and “self actualisation” is also a fundamental human need. These can be in conflict with each other, because being authentic (and also personal growth) often causes others to reject us in some way through criticism, and even abandonment eg a relationship with a friend, partner or family member may change in nature or end.

There is a partial solution to this - surround yourself with people who accept you for who you are, and inspire, encourage and support you to be yourself, grow, and fulfil your potential. I cannot emphasise enough how important your “human influences” are for the quality of your life.

At the same time, this doesn’t remove the risk of people “rejecting” you in some way, or the fear of it happening. It WILL happen, and so we have to build the courage to feel the discomfort and move forward anyway.

Humans are complex.

We are hard wired for survival. This is an aspect of our primal nature. This is the part that is always on the lookout for possible threats and tries to “protect” us. And depending on the experiences from our past, we may develop deep subconscious patterns which hold us back, and a disregulated and unresilient nervous system, which may cause us to experience the discomfort that we label fear, in a more intense way. The good news is, that we can improve the condition of our nervous system, and make changes at the subconscious level.

We also have the thinking mind with mental faculties such as logic, reasoning and imagination. We have deep intuition/knowing (wisdom of the body). And we have our consciousness (our level of awareness). We can use and develop all of these to help us “feel the feelings and do it anyway”

I know this can be done because I’ve done it myself, and have helped many others to do the same. I shifted from a “people pleaser” who’s petrified of rejection, to someone with the courage to be myself, who has healthy boundaries, and is able to feel the discomfort and do it anyway.

How do we do this? Unfortunately, there is no “simple 5 step process” or easy hacks. It’s a holistic process that takes time, support and is slightly different for everyone. When I work with clients we dive deep to make shifts in their awareness, thinking mind and subconscious system, and change their environment/influences, so that they build a stronger sense of self (esteem, belief, trust and confidence), and are better able to make new choices, and behave in new ways. Over time, this leads to greater happiness, more fulfilling relationships, better health, personal growth, and business success.

If fears are getting in the way of you creating the life and business of your dreams, and you’re ready to make a change, get in touch for a no obligation chat. I’d love to help you.