Why You Shouldn't Aim to Be Fearless

Melanie Mishler: 00:01

Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, friend, and welcome back to the podcast.

Today we're gonna talk about fear. And this is one of my favorite topics besides pleasure because we all have fear. But today I wanna talk about how it shows up when we set big goals for ourselves and how we can move through it. The same thing happens when we set big quote manifestation goals or we wanna dream really big. Fear shows up in a really interesting way. And I wanna give you the tools to be able to move.

through that and also to acknowledge it. So I've been thinking about this topic a lot this week because I was in a coffee shop on Monday and the lady next to me had a shirt that said fearless in big bold letters. And I looked over at it and I started giggling and I said, I'm so sorry. I love your shirt, but I'm giggling because I could never wear it. My t -shirt would say something like scared shitless, but doing it anyway. And we both laughed.

And as soon as I said that, she completely lit up. Her eyes got really wide, she smiled and she said, my God, that's what my shirt should really say. And so we both started laughing and we got to talking. It was a great connection, but it got me thinking about how we have this tendency today to try and completely eliminate fear or to pretend that we just simply don't experience it. But let's be honest,

Fear is a natural part of life. It's our brain's way of protecting us from danger. But today in our modern world, our brains can't tell the difference between real danger, like a lion chasing us through the jungle, or stepping out of our comfort zone, or taking a leap into starting that business you've been dreaming of, or going for a big goal. All of those things activate the same danger and fear cues in our brain.

Melanie Mishler: 02:23

So I think we need to recognize that we don't do ourselves any favors by acting tough and fearless. We're actually doing ourselves a disservice because that fear is still there. We're just not acknowledging it. And by ignoring it, it tends to grow bigger, right? It's almost like putting a pot on the stove and then just leaving it there to boil without tending to it. And I know when I cook, I do this all the time. I have a tendency to get distracted and then Andy will come and say, love.

What's on the stove? You have to check it. And the same thing happens with our fears. When we don't check it, it just kind of boils and gets thicker and bigger. And sometimes fear is so sneaky. It can keep us from even acknowledging what we really want in the first place. It will say things in our brains like, don't even think about that dream. It's just too big for you.

or you're not cut out for that goal, or you're too old for that, or on and on and on. I mean, there's a million things that your brain will say that it's actually fear. And I think this fear is the worst because we rarely, rarely acknowledge it. Those nasty voices in our head are things that we often keep private. And that fear voice is a real dream killer because it will stop us before we even get started. It's almost like,

having this invisible barrier around us that we don't even realize is there. But it's not a good barrier, it's one that's keeping us from going for bigger things, for acknowledging our desires. I know I've experienced this a lot in my own life, and I see it a lot when I'm working with women on setting goals and getting clear on what they want to create in their life. Because it's really easy and common for us to shrink down our desires and just kind of settle, because it can be scary to think if we

dream too big that we might get disappointed. Or if we go for too big of a goal, then we might fail or be disappointed or whatever. But remember, the first part of goal setting or manifesting or whatever you want to call it is getting clear on what you want. Even if it's scary, even if it seems impossible, even if we don't know how we'll reach that goal or manifest that thing in our life. So I just want you to take a moment and think about something.

Melanie Mishler: 04:41

I want you to think about the biggest accomplishment you've ever had, or maybe it was the biggest goal you've ever reached. Just take a moment and kind of bring that into your mind. And then I want you to ask yourself, was there fear around this? And if you're human, the chances are yes, there was probably a lot of fear. I know in my own life, my biggest accomplishments and the things that were most meaningful in my life were always preceded.

by huge amounts of fear. Almost as if the bigger the thing, or the more important the thing, the greater the fear. This included becoming a mother, giving birth, let me tell you that's fucking scary, opening a business, moving to a new town to create a new life, getting married, all of these things.

came with huge amounts of fear that I had to acknowledge and work through and overcome. On the flip side, that huge amount of fear was also there for not just big goals, but for thrilling things like skydiving and bungee jumping. And let me tell you that I was so excited to go skydiving and so excited to go bungee jumping. And it was a great idea when I was on the ground, right? When I was on the ground, I was all talk, like, this is gonna be so fun. I'm not scared at all. I can't wait.

Then when you get to the jumping off point, it's a whole other story. When it's the jumping off point from the bungee cord platform or jumping out of a perfectly good plane, that jumping off point is scary and it's supposed to be. I mean, our brains would be doing us a disservice if we were just like, let's go. This sounds like a great idea. And the same thing happens.

Many times when we have big goals or big dreams, when we come to that jumping off point, that point of taking action towards our dreams, we often come up against resistance and resistance is just our brain throwing a bunch of fear out. It often can show up as like self -sabotage, procrastination and many, many other things. So the question is friend, what do we do here? What do we do with all this fear? It's uncomfortable. We all don't like it. We want to pretend it's not there. Well,

Melanie Mishler: 06:59

First, we have to know that the goal is not to be fearless. It's not like my new friend's t -shirt says. We don't want that. We don't want to eliminate fear, and we couldn't anyway because it's impossible. We also don't want to just ignore it, pretend it's not there, and then white -knuckle our way through life, pretending that we're all strong and valiant. The goal is to change our relationship with fear, is to understand that it's a sign that we're often

pushing boundaries, growing, evolving, or often it's because we're on the brink of something really, really great. And let's be real, growth and change are fucking uncomfortable. It can be really scary, but that's also where all the magic happens in our life. So next week, we're gonna chat about a strategy I use called doable discomfort, which is a great way to kind of ease through fears as we grow. But today I just wanted to open up the conversation about being honest with ourselves.

about what really scares us. I think like that woman in the coffee shop with her fearless shirt, we want to portray this vision of ourselves as being so strong and fearless. But it's important to remember that real strength comes from adaptability, flexibility, honesty, the ability to be intimate with our fears instead of leaving them hidden and having them just derail or deflate our dreams without us having any input. And one great

cool that will, it will change your life. I promise you, if you do this in the right context, if you have the right support, when you do this, it will change your life is to do a process that I take my clients through where what they do is I have them free, right? All of their fears and free writing is just basically, I want you to think getting a piece of paper, having no distractions and just projectile vomiting onto the paper with your pen, all of your fears.

any nasty thing your brain's ever said to you, any fear from tiny fears to huge fears, all of them, we get them all out on the page. And then we go through them and we evaluate the truthfulness of them. We look at them straight on. And I have to say, when I did this with my coach a couple of years ago, it was the most powerful thing I've done in years. I wrote down every single fear that I could think of.

Melanie Mishler: 09:25

From the time I was a little kid to the present moment, every nasty thing I'd said to myself, all of those negative voices in my head, I got them all down on paper. And then the two of us went through them one by one. And there's something so powerful about first acknowledging the fears, many of them I had never ever spoken to anyone in my life, right? Those are those secret fears that just kind of keep us in that bubble.

And so to actually speak them to someone was so powerful, but then having someone witness them and hold them for me and opening the space to really look at them and evaluate them together was life -changing. And I see this for my clients. When we do this, it's usually the most powerful coaching session they have. It will unlock so much because again,

It's almost like we go through our lives and these fears are like dust bunnies that just gather under our bed and they just keep gathering. There's like a million dust bunnies down there, but we never look under the bed and clear them out. So when you do this, it clears out all those dust bunnies and we can actually evaluate like, is this a valid fear? Is this yes or no? Some were, some were so absurd that I actually started laughing when I spoke them out loud to my coach because I thought.

That just doesn't even make sense that I would think that. But let me tell you, it was running my life for a really long time. So I encourage you to take this on. I encourage you to try this. Get it all out, go through it. Do have someone that can support you through this. If you'd like to reach out to me, I would love to share how I support women through this process. I wanna say it's really important if you do this process, to do it with someone who has the capacity to hold this space for you.

And what I mean is that they have the ability to go really deep with you, to really explore these fears, because some of them feel very valid. Some of them are valid, and some of them are just dust bunnies. So again, that can be a therapist or a coach like me. Just make sure you have support, because when you get that page, I'm telling you, it's a little overwhelming and kind of sad to look through that page and realize,

Melanie Mishler: 11:43

This is all the shit I've been saying to myself for years. Some of us it's 40 years we've been saying this shit. Anyway, all right friend, I hope today was helpful. I know I went on kind of a rant. Also, I forgot to tell you that episodes are now dropping on Thursday. So I switched my day from Wednesday to Thursday so you can look forward to new content every Thursday. And I think that's about it. All right, friend, I hope you liked this episode. If so, please rate, subscribe and share it with a friend.

See you next week.