The “Art” of Erasing Fear, Anxiety and Doubt. What You Think Changes How You Behave

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Lets be honest with ourselves, to think everyone is going through each day with happy go lucky feeling about life just really isn’t true. I believe most of us are overwhelmed, feel alone and don’t disclose the reality to anyone that they are struggling because if they do people will think they are crazy, ill equipped and don’t have what it takes. This post is to encourage you that you aren’t alone.

The saying goes you are what you eat. Well, the same goes “what you believe you behave”. Same thing. What you put in you put out. This was one of the most powerful things I ever learned and wished someone would of told me as a youngster. As human beings we have a brain. We have the power of “choosing” what we will think. I spent years being plagued by fear, anxiety and guilt. I felt I was a victim of these thoughts and that I was just this way. We rarely realize that this way of thinking effects every aspect and decision and every person we come in contact with.

Was this is the way I was always going to be, feel and think? Then I was recommended by my mentor an incredible book “Telling Yourself the Truth”. It helped me realize the technique to restructuring the way I think and to put it to use. If guilt, fear and anxiety don’t get dealt with they can paralyze you, hamper creativity and stifle all that you are going after. Basically render you ineffective and out of the game.

I know wholeheartedly my identity in God through his Son, however, that takes renewing my mind and constantly reminding myself. I didn’t know how. No one showed me how. The world is constantly bombarding me with advertisements of who I am “not”. I cannot tell you how liberated I became and set free from the prison in my head of the worlds thoughts, fear, guilt and shame about myself.

If God sent his son so that I may have life and have it abundantly then why couldn’t I shake the lies and mental anguish? I became very frustrated. Freedom should be different. Should feel different. Let me also make something clear: Life isn’t about “feeling” good. Just because I don’t feel good doesn’t mean life sucks. Example: If you are “healthy” there really isn’t a feeling associated with it. You are just healthy. We cannot base our condition of life off of feeling. Feelings come and go. They ebb and flow. The constant for me that never ebbs and flows is the joy and hope in my security in knowing and believing what God did for me. I cannot save my efforts, my performance or myself. So, freedom takes on a whole new meaning.

It has taken time, practice and it ebbs and flows. I’m not “cured” but I can tell you I am excited and thankful for the tools to restructure my thinking. It’s a discipline to return to the well of truth of who I am (identity), what I am supposed to do and how I am supposed to do it. It’s a moment by moment action. It’s a daily discipline. Imagine taking your medication. I have to be intentional. Times of solitude, good friends for encouragement and support, time in prayer.

Nothing is better than being given permission to overcome doubt, fear and guilt with “how I want to choose to feel”. Life will continue to happen. With or without us. We can change our lives by what we choose to think.

We have two options in responding to everything: love or fear.

My prayer, is that you renew your mind knowing you are loved, you matter, you have freedom available to you and the fear, guilt and doubt don’t have to run you. You can run them and shut them down. There is hope. That light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train.

I dedicate this post to my wife and children along with my best friends. They have been patient with me over all these years and been there for me as I’ve learned the “art” of telling myself the truth.

Thanks for being a part of this journey as creatives, business owners, leaders, parents, students and risk takers. You’re not alone.

” I came so that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Please share this post, repost and tweet. Even more, please leave a comment below and let me know how you’ve found victory over the lies, doubts, fears and guilt that invades the mind.

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