How To Deal With Fear
How to deal with fear is about a personal experience I had when I messed up, felt a lot of fear, but recognized it and took action.
A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Bentonville, AR for a training program.
But two hours before I was due to leave for the airport I realized something that let loose a few moths in my tummy.
My hotel booking was in Fayetteville; my training program was in Bentonville.
I whipped out my phone and called the Marriott in Fayetteville where I was booked. Within minutes, I learned that it would take me 30 minutes to travel from there to my event in Bentonville.
Mind you, the universe had to tried to get my attention and warn me.
A day before my departure I was riffling through my travel documents when the name Fayetteville caught my eye.
Hmm. Fayetteville. But…isn’t my event in Bentonville??
This was an intuitive nudge. But my monkey mind jumped in and started to chatter. You have the right name. This booking was made weeks ago. You couldn’t have made a mistake that big. So I shrugged it off.
Two hours before I was to leave home, something about the name Fayetteville nagged at me again. I pulled out my phone and texted a friend who was also attending the event and planned to stay at the same hotel as me.
“You’re at the Courtyard in Fayetteville, right?” I asked her.
“No. Courtyard in Bentonville,” she texted back.
In that moment I knew I’d made a big mistake.
Luckily my husband was working from home. I told him my problem. He was quick to hop on the phone with Marriott–to hopefully try and change my booking from the Marriott in Fayetteville to the one in Bentonville.
My heart was pounding. My cheeks felt warm, flushed. My mouth was dry. How could I have done this??!! Why didn’t I check this all yesterday? What if I can’t go? How much money am I going to lose over this?
In the midst of my big mistake, I managed to do three things.
- I noticed the sensations in my body. Fear, I identified the emotion that was causing the sensations.
- I noticed the thoughts running around in my head. They were not at all helpful, so I shifted my thinking.
- I turned it around with gratitude.
As soon as I started to breathe intentionally, my fear started to dissolve. I began to think positive. I allow Divine solutions to emerge now. My Divine team is in charge here. Everything is unfolding with perfect grace and ease. All is well. I noticed what I was grateful for. Even when things look like they’re falling apart, there is always, always something to be grateful for. I gathered all the evidence. I have a flight booking. I have a hotel booking. If the Bentonville Courtyard has no rooms available, I can take a cab to the event. I caught the mistake in time. My husband is helping me.
As I practiced my affirmations and gratitude I heard the hotel staff member on the speakerphone. Yes, rooms were available. Yes, they could switch my booking. No, they would not charge a cancellation fee.
It all worked out perfectly. In just five minutes.
I’m not saying every situation in life will have a perfect ending. But I am saying that our thoughts of gratitude and positivity have tremendous power to affect outcomes.
Key Points:
- Fear is like a security guard that perks up at the slightest hint of a threat. But I had to let fear know that I was in charge. That is the single most important thing you can do.
- Deep breaths take traction away from the part of our brain that’s freaking out. In taking some slow deep breaths I was deactivating the alarm that was going off in my brain.
- By intentionally envisioning a positive outcome, I grabbed power away from the thought Everything is about to go wrong which is our standard reactive mode.
Triggered by fears? Book a free 60-minute session with me and I’ll guide you with a practice to calm down.