Fear can be a great teacher when we learn not to “fear” it. As JFK once professed, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”.

In other words, do we allow fear to dictate the direction and details of our life – or dare we face off with it, engage it, and even invite it in to examine its root cause so we can move past it?

We know what will happen if we allow fear to keep us at bay – we stay, we remain, we hold – but what awaits just past our fears? What’s on the other side of them? No doubt adventure, discovery, newness, risk, and change.

To some, these words may hold enough power to incite fear, but to others, they are an invitation and enticement to engage it.

Next time fear raises its head, rather than freezing and being flooded by it, may we invite it to have a conversation. Question it – why are you here? What is the reason for your visit? What do you want?

Often times, we find our fears to be very young – stemming from our childhood – adolescent fears never addressed, never engaged, and never surpassed. Perhaps it’s fear of failure because we were shamed, or ridiculed anytime we failed.

Or it might be fear of change, because our daily lives were filled with such instability, and uncertainty, we crave predictability as an outcry for control, since everything always felt so uncontrollable and chaotic.

So many reason for fears, and they will always pop up, but when they do, rather than succumbing to them, may we more deeply inspect them and inquire of them – learn from them and grow past them – for so much of life awaits us just beyond our fears.

They may in fact be our mind and body’s way to try and protect us – but we are adults now – no longer children – and if we choose, we can engage them in order to heal and move past them to all the newness that exists just beyond them.