Most people aren’t held back by a lack of knowledge, opportunity, health, wealth, or wellbeing.
The single barrier blocking most of us is fear.
Fear tells you:
- keep everything under control
- be safe
- don’t be too vulnerable
- limit risk
- don’t dream
- don’t trust
- don’t get your hopes up
It stunts our ability to grow, lead, and impact the people around us.
And it’s very subtle. It comes from past hurts and it waits beneath the surface for years.
We get hurt, then we isolate, then we hold onto the pain because it feels like something we deserved.
Unknowingly, we feed fear.
But at the root of fear is something much sneakier – the need for control.
See, the fruit of fear is easy to spot:
- Anger
- Stress
- Worry
- Feelings of insignificance
- So on and so forth
But you’ll notice that these pop up whenever things feel out of control.
Control feels safe, so we learn to chase it.
When we realize we can’t have it – because we can never truly have full control of anything in life – the body goes into fight or flight.
This is the essence of anxiety.
It’s caused by unthrottled and mismanaged thoughts about situations that are outside of our control.
This is also the cycle of fear.
What we do with the desire for control is what will determine whether or not fear grows inside of us.
We can do one of two things:
- Be willing to sit with the discomfort of what’s uncontrollable without trying to fix it (which is REALLY difficult)
- Run in circles chasing a solution until our brains go haywire with stress, anxiety, and panic
Unresolved pain will always lead us to option B.
A person with an open wound has to give up control to a doctor to get healed.
Hiding the wound until it gets infected would cause unnecessary pain, anger, fear, and irrational behavior.
Fighting for control usually leads to the opposite of what you want.
Release is simple, yet counter-intuitive:
Practice release in the small, mundane things, and start storing up positive outcomes.
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart…” (Luke 6:45)
Memories drive behavior.
Give your brain micro-experiences of releasing control throughout your day, and start storing up positive outcomes (not all will be positive, so more reps are better).
With a memory bank of positive outcomes, releasing control will feel less and less like a death sentence.
And over time, you’ll see that life and healing go hand in hand with release.