What would your life be without fear?

There’s no doubt that fear is important.

It’s here to keep you alive.

Without fear, you’d be jumping off cliffs and eating all the pretty round red berries.

Yeah…you wouldn’t last too long on the physical plane.

But I’d bet 1000 bucks that it’s also holding you back.

Fear grips each of us in different ways.

You could be afraid of expressing your feelings to your partner because you don’t want them to think you’re a nag.

Or perhaps you’re afraid of making a necessary career change because your identity is so wrapped up in the job you currently have.

Maybe you’re afraid of traveling to a new country because it could be uncomfortable and you might not like the food.

The thing is, while the feeling of fear is always valid, the thoughts that come with it often are not.

And the thoughts you have in your head have a tendency to get in the way of life as you’re living it.

Because try as your mind might, it can’t actually predict the way life unravels.

Sometimes your mind’ll guess it, sure.

But if you’re paying attention, you’ll come to find that life is usually way more interesting than your mind’s predictions.

This can be especially confusing when life is calling you toward something new.

It’s been coming up a lot for me lately, personally.

I’m in a transition phase.

Unpredictability is at an all-time high.

I’ve been watching my mind as it tries to find a story to cling to so it can feel like everything is going to be okay.

(Click here to learn a technique that will help you let go of negative thoughts).

The Truth is, everything is going to be okay.

But life doesn’t always look the way we imagine it “should”, and that can be really scary.

When you can’t predict the outcome, it makes you feel like you’re out of control.

Spoiler alert: you are always out of control, even when you feel like you’re not.

In every moment there are infinitely more forces at play than you can even conceive of, let alone influence through your will.

The fact that you’re out of control isn’t actually the problem.

The problem is your unwavering insistence that you “should” be able to control the uncontrollable.

And all of this has me thinking back on a book I read earlier this year, called The Surrender Experiment, by Michael Singer.

In The Surrender Experiment, Singer commits himself to surrender, which means showing up for whatever life has to offer.

And he talks about the many times life has asked him to do something that his mind insists he doesn’t want to do.

This philosophy of surrender leads him to dedicate himself fully to projects and experiences he previously had no plan or desire to pursue.

Do you know what happens next?

He becomes wildly successful in all he does.

But more importantly, he enjoys his life tremendously as he is living it.

And this is what it is to live beyond fear.

It’s not that fear won’t come up.

It will.

Fear is built into the DNA of the human body.

But when you see that life is calling you in a new direction, ask yourself this:

“What would this moment be without fear?”

“What would I do if I wasn’t afraid of letting go?”

“What am I being called to do right now?”

“How can I surrender?”

Maybe it won’t look the way you imagined or wanted it to.

But maybe, just maybe, it’ll be even more enjoyable that way.