Half of learning how to deal with fear is not only learning new information but unlearning old unhelpful information.
This can be tricky since according to psychiatric research, there are roughly 2000 identified fears. But I learned the other day that we are born with only 2: the fear of falling and fear of loud noises. So that tells me the others 1998 are learned. Now that’s a sad reality, but also good news.
Because it means if we can learn, we can also unlearn.
With the modern MRI, it has been proven that the brain can be physiologically rewired now. That means the brain is ‘plastic’ and malleable. This is all good news. Because with so many of our fears being learned, we can also unlearn it. But how you ask?
Well, the first place to start is in recognizing that a lot of our fears are irrational and based in worry about some future event that will never happen. Statistically, over 87% of what we worry about NEVER happens. That’s a whole lot of fear for nothing in my book.
And it is the failure to unlearn these irrational fears and misconceptions that keep us from being all we are called to be.
How many times have you thought there was only one way something could work out, only to find later on that the situation totally resolved in a way you didn’t even consider?
Fear makes us narrow-minded and stubborn and very myopic. It closes down the prefrontal cortex (your solution center of the brain) and traps you into thinking there is only one way which incites more fear.
Jesus showed us with the invalid who was sitting by the pool was so fixed on his ONE way to be healed that he wasted 38 years of his life. Jesus came along and healed him cognitively (opened his mind) and then his physical healing came. Jesus gave him an alternative he had not been open to nor considered.
I have come to believe that EVERY problem has a solution usually at least one and more like three so I can certainly find one of them.
Faith rewires the human brain to be able to see solutions not always physically present.
That’s what we are doing here in this amazing community of women who are bringing their visions to reality by teaching Strengths-Based Living and the importance of Mental Fitness. The women here are finding solutions and possibilities that are not always physically present at first.
The man in the story with Jesus mistakenly assumed in his myopic fearful view that there was only one way to solve his problem and thus he wasted so many precious years of his life.
What assumptions are you making about yourself that are coming from your fears that cost you precious time?
We know thoughts become things, so if you are living life focused on your weaknesses and beating yourself up, you are bound to feel a lot of fear that may even paralyze you too.
If you are living life focused on your strengths, you are going to be able to unlearn a whole bunch of fears and see so many possibilities that maybe, just maybe you may see a miracle like our friend the invalid mentioned above.
If you want to know more about how to do that, go ahead and reach out to set up a call.
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