How Being Fearless Can Actually Improve Your Health

Being Fearless is not the absence of fear – but the decisions we make when it shows up in our life. Not making these decisions can be hazardous to your health.

How many people suffer shortness of breath, weakness in the legs, tightness in the neck and shoulders, or a sick feeling in the stomach when confronted with something they fear? We all know the syndrome. We’d rather do ANYTHING else rather than deal with what makes us uncomfortable. Avoiding our fears, finding ways to circumvent it is a huge threat to our health. But the harsh truth is we are making ourselves sick when we deny the challenge. When we refuse to confront the things that scare us, both emotionally and physically, the body has a way of telling you that you are holding back. We all suffer the consequences of our dis-ease.

According to statistics done by the University of Chicago between 70 and 80 percent of our thinking each day is negative. That’s a whole lot of pessimism and fear there. One of the greatest fears we encounter as we age is that of ill-health. The fear of ill-health is tied up with the fear of poverty. Can we afford the medical care, will we be able to take care of our family. These are the real fears that confront us. But we can do something about it, and it’s not all positive affirmations and la la land thinking either.

Many us who are now in our 50’s and 60’s and beyond, are still trapped in thinking that should have been changed 20 or 30 years ago. We cling to old habits and outmoded ways of doing things out of insecurity, and although the Boomer generation may be saying we love change; we invented what that looks like, the truth is most of us don’t like change. We prefer to know what we know and leave it at that. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, well this old broad certainly learned new tricks.

Like most people, I grew up with tremendous self-doubts and fears. The message I received from my abusive, alcoholic father was I would never amount to much. I struggled hard to overcome that negative evaluation of me, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there lingered the thought that perhaps my father was right. I’m not alone with this kind of thinking, but it was destructive and I wanted a healthy attitude, not a negative one. The self-doubt and fear never goes away, but I’ve learned ways to handle it, and to move on with my life from a conscious place. I chose not to let it rule my life. I took actions that improved my self-confidence and improved my attitude so that I could see progress, could feel the difference between knowing I could do something, and thinking maybe not.

Start by taking action. Nine times out of ten, when you step up to these fears, it is nowhere near as bad as you think it will be. We’re old enough to know that, right? However, you have to step up to find out. We have to take a risk to cross the chasm of the known to unknown and take a chance that it will come out the way we want it to. We know there are no guarantees in life. We live, we die, and in between we suffer setbacks and success. Right now, we worry about not having enough money for retirement, our health and whether we have enough coverage to protect us from any disasters, and we worry about aging in general. These are real fears, but when we contract into worry, we can’t expand into creating the life we want.

I have an acronym for RISK. It’s called Respect your Intention and Show Kourage. When we respect our intention to do something - do it - and don’t hold back just in case it’s not going to turn out the way you want it to. So many times we stop ourselves before we even give it a chance. Life is risk. There are no guarantees. We know this.

Learn how to laugh at your fears. Research has shown that children laugh on average 400 times a day. By the time we get to adulthood, we are laughing perhaps 17 times a day. We take ourselves too seriously. When we laugh it reduces our stress. It increases the good hormones like dopamine and endorphins. Learning how to laugh about things instead of complaining increases your lifespan by ………. So laugh.

It is known that if we keep our brains busy and continue to learn we engage with others in a more stimulating way. As we age, we worry about Alzheimers and other mental incapacitation. We may not have any control over this, but exercising the brain is a good way of encouraging your spirits to continue soaring. My husband is 61 and he decided to become a rabbi. He’s now involved in the most intense study program he’s ever been in. But he still can’t remember where he put things!! Learn how to be more open with what troubles you. If ill-health is an issue, start by observing how you think about your illness. What are you most afraid of? Is it the idea of poverty and inability to take care of your family, or are you afraid of dying. What would be your most positive outcome? Fear won’t go away, but you can control your relationship to it. You’ll be surprised at how many people share the same thoughts about who they are, or what they can do. We are all limited by our self-perceptions. Most of the time we’re wrong.

The thoughts we think and the words we say heal who we are. Conquering our fears can be challenging, but if we start by changing our language, we change our life. Change how you speak to yourself. Change from the negative to the more powerfully positive. What you choose to believe about yourself becomes your reality. If you believe you are afraid, you will be. If you believe you are fearless, and at least have a choice when confronted by your fear, you will be. It’s all about choice.

When you learn how to control you reactions to your fear, and begin to understand that fear is a feeling, not a fact, you will start to improve your health because you have already improved the quality of your thinking. Nobody said it would be easy, but it is possible.

Live the fearless life, for your health’s sake.

If you would like help to become a Fearless Fifty, please contact me at Jacqueline@jacquelinewales.com or visit my website at www.jacquelinewales.com