A Path to Liberating Yourself From Fear

Audio Transcript

Welcome to this practice on liberation.

When your thoughts constrict your perspective, the daily practice of grateful living opens you up to life. It liberates you from dualistic thinking that distracts you from whatever gifts, opportunities, beauty, and precious moments fill a day.

This guided practice will help you notice fearful thoughts, examine them, and commit to holding your fear accountable.

Fear is a primal response to perceiving danger. It leads your body and your brain to choose fight or flight. Those are only two options for confronting the complexities of your life. In this practice, we will open our perspective to explore beyond those two paths. By liberating yourself, setting yourself free from fearful thinking, you become open to greater joy, meaning purpose, belonging, and hope in your daily life. So let’s settle in together.

Take a moment to pause by tuning into your body. Feel your breath and your heartbeat.

When a big thought or uncomfortable emotion arises, acknowledge it and return to your heart and breath.

As you arrive at this particular moment, I invite you to take inventory of any thoughts or feelings that have stirred up fear in your day so far. This could include fear you absorbed from the news, like political discourse, a fracturing relationship, stress at work or at home, perhaps you have grief for someone or something that didn’t go as expected and now you’re afraid of the outcome. Go ahead and acknowledge your encounter with fear today.

As you begin to examine any fears you may be carrying with you, take this moment to truly acknowledge one fear and ask it some questions:

Where did you come from?

What do you hope to achieve?

And are you real?

As the answers to these questions begin to emerge, notice whether the fear exists because the danger is real or because a perception of danger has emerged from your mind or body. You don’t have to let it off the hook and allow it to roam wild just because you feel it. You can hold the fear accountable.

So I’ll repeat the questions again:

Where did you come from?

What do you hope to achieve?

Are you real?

As you sit with this fear, be mindful that fear provides two paths. You can fight or you can flee — two options baked deep into your biology. But as a practitioner, you’re attuned to your body, your thoughts, and your surroundings. So take a moment to be open to exploring the other paths available to you.

When you recognize them, you can say to your fear, where did you come from? Because I disinvite you.

What do you hope to achieve? Because I only welcome goodness and kindness here.

Are you real? Because if you aren’t here to care for me, then you must leave.

With fear at your back, you are standing at what appears to be the end of a road. On your left is the option to fight. Here you can resist by putting all of your emotional and physical energy to work. You can push and you can pull, you can struggle your way to victory. On your right is a path out of here. You can run, run faster than you think your feet can carry you. You don’t even have to look back. There’s nothing but new scenery here, but you will have to leave some things behind.

As you consider your options, look ahead, neither to your right or your left, and see if perhaps there is another way, another route that can emerge. Maybe there isn’t a road, but maybe there is a slightly worn path in the woods. Go ahead and imagine this other option. What is possible on the other side of this path if you decide fighting or fleeing are detrimental and not your best options?

Pay attention to your body and your breath. What do you feel happening when you open your thoughts to other options and say to yourself, I will not fight and I will not run. What if you step onto this trail and discover there are even more trails than this one? The discovery of these trails are our path to liberation from fear. The trailhead may look different in every situation but they are an alternative route to reacting to your life with fear.

At this trailhead is an invitation to explore, to look around, to question, to wonder, and to discover. Here, there is even an invitation to lean in to the mystery of uncertainty and to embrace what is unknowable in any situation.

Standing at this trailhead, take a moment to look around with that fear still at your back for any additional paths before you.

As you remain tuned into your breath and heart today, remember that your mind can be as free and steady as each inhale and exhale as you liberate yourself from fear by attuning to your life and seeking to discover whatever paths are available to you at any given moment.

May you be set free from fearful thoughts, thoughts that constrict your ability to see whatever possibilities lay at your feet, remembering that you do not have to turn left, you do not have to turn right, to understand fear as a choice. You don’t have to choose, no matter how wonky or uneven the way.