Facing Fear

I faced FEAR today!

Holy shit... My legs shook like hell... I felt my heart beating in every inch of my body... It was not death but it sure felt like it!

— B*itch, STOP this car R.I.G.H.T N.O.W! — Fear yelled.

In that moment I felt trapped. It felt way too dangerous, and way too scary, to keep driving up the mountain. The road was too narrow and so damn steep. I could see the road disappearing under the car as I curved… OMG!!! It seemed the car was flying — all I could see was the car and the sky.

F*ck!!! My car has no wings and neither do I!

At that point, the only way to feeling great and safe again (OMG, I wanted it so badly!) was to go all the way up! Literally, there was no turning back.

Suddenly, the fear of keep moving forward became smaller than turning the car around, and so I kept going.

When I finally stopped the car, it felt like a huge relief! My legs were shaking, and I could barely walk! I took some deep breaths in and out, and walked all the way up to the top.

And you know what? Fear wouldn’t shut up:

— Are you happy now? I hope this shit was worth it! What do you expect to find here? There are only big rocks here! And you’re also afraid of rocks, remember?

As I watched my son exploring the surroundings, I fooled myself into the illusion that I was enjoying myself, hiding behind the camera, and taking some pictures of him. Fear wasn’t going anywhere, and it wasn’t giving up either, as it shouted:

— How the hell are you going to drive your way down? I can’t believe you brought us here!

Fear was hysterical, and for me to be able to live that experience fully, I had to take a moment to acknowledge its presence, breathe and let it know that everything was going to be ok.

(At this point I am fooling myself… what else can I do? Fake it until you make it!).

Yes, it seemed dangerous! Yes, it looked and felt scary... But I would drive very slowly and carefully on the way down. If others can do it, I can also do it myself.

Now, there was nothing Fear could do, but I… I could choose: I could freak out or I could enjoy the wonderful experience of being there, at the mountain top. I mean, being truly and actually there, and NOT pretending that I was there!

And so I made a decision. I decided I wanted to BE FULLY PRESENT!

Fear stood there, aside, arms crossed, grumbling and waiting for the moment to go down:

— This b*tch, since she met that Tony Robbins guy and walked on that fire, she doesn't listen to me like she used to... and with all that meditation and self-development bullsh*t she is into, she thinks she can dare and defy me... Well... I gotta say that we’ve been to some quite amazing places, and met some extraordinary people but …

(bla bla bla)

SILENCE entered my body! I don’t recall ever experiencing that kind of silence. The immense space before my eyes, all the mountains around, the different autumn colours blending together and kissing the blue of the sky, two birds flying around and playing together in a dance only they understood…

The silence and I became one! And in that moment, I was FREE!

On the way down... OMG... Fear was freaking out again and making a scene!

As I write this and share this story with you, I found it very curious to witness my reaction to feeling trapped and scared — I wanted it to STOP! I wanted to quit! I froze, and I wanted someone to come and save me. I wanted to throw the towel and have someone come and get my car out of there.

I guess this is exactly what Tony Robbins means, when he says that if you want to take the island, you gotta burn the damn boats. Having escape doors will make you use them when standing before Fear.

I wonder how many times we all go through moments like this where we feel fearful, or scared, and we want to give up, run away or have someone to come and save us?!

So, if I could share something powerful and transformational with you, here are TWO things I would say:

1) What is your biggest fear in life? What are you most afraid of in your life?

STOP reading now, and take a moment to write down what comes up for you when you ask yourself that question.

(I hope you have PAUSED!)

2) What could be a fear bigger than that fear? What could it be that you could fear even more than the thing you fear the most?

What if the only way to going down and feeling great again is going all the way up?

At the top of the moutain…

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Set Yourself Free

It’s Autumn but it doesn’t really feel like it. The weather is really hot, the sun is shining bright and it feels like a summer day. So, what better thing to do on a summer-not-so-autumn day than to head to the seaside?!
 

That’s exactly what I did yesterday. There I was at the beach with my kid, and there’s no one to be seen. My favourite days to visit the beach. Pure bliss! I am there, soaking up on the beauty of the sea, losing myself in the vastness of the space in front of me, and blissfully enjoying the smell of the salty water… and all of a sudden I notice this fence right in front of me.

I hadn’t seen it before. I had not realised it was there. What could have drawn my attention to it? I worried about my kid falling. So, when fear kicked in, I looked for safety, for security and that’s when I saw the fence. (which is totally fine)

But there is something peculiar about this fence... It is being put together by rope wrapped around it … it looked so fragile…

The actual fence!

You know, in the past I would have given in to fear, and completely forget about the wonderful sight, with the sea and the sky meeting each other. But not yesterday!

And I wondered… How many times do we feel like we are on the edge of something extraordinarily different and exciting, and then fear makes us look for security, distracting us and holding us back from?

How many times we feel something is about to shift in our life, we’re excited about it, and because of fear we HOLD ON to fences that are so freaking unstable?

How many times do we dare so little, holding on to fences which are so weak that wouldn't be able to hold you if you were to lean onto them?

How many times do we hold on to fences that really don't serve us anymore? Fences we keep fixing… we keep mending… out of fear!

There comes a day that the fence that once kept us safe, will now keep us trapped inside.

It may give us the illusion that being behind the fence is much better, much safer… but that’s just it – an illusion!

I remember the day I received my last paycheck from school with ZERO euros on it. I had quit my job as a teacher after 24 years. There was not much of a plan except to keep moving and showing up for what I am really passionate about.

That day I was freaking out! Fear kept shouting at me:

— What the f*ck are you doing with your life?

And for 12 hours in a row I played the same song, over and over again (UNSTOPPABLE by Sia). I listened to it, and I sang for hours and hours straight. My hands were sweating; my heart was beating so fast. Luckily it’s blood because if it was milk, it would have turned into butter! OMG!!! I was really freaking out, but I was not going back!

That day I made sure I surrounded myself with an empowering group of people. I remember one particular person telling me:

— Awesome! Now you can shoot for the stars. The sky is the limit!

That was it!!!! There was no more fence. No more hiding, and no more playing small. I had removed the fence, and now there were no more limits. No more mending or fixing the fence, finding excuses to it, postponing decisions, blaming others and complaining about it…

I had jumped and now, all I had to do was to keep on flying and soar!

The summer-not-so-autumn Sunday...

So, I wonder…

Is there a fence you are holding on to that doesn’t serve you anymore? Is there a fence you keep on mending and fixing?

What would it look like if you jumped? How exciting would your life be if you took the leap and started to fly? What would be possible for you without the fence? How exciting would your life be if you remembered that you are actually a free being capable of achieving every dream you dream?

Share your fences in the comments! I would love to read about them.

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My Relationship With Weight

My battle with weight began when I was around 16. I have never been too obese but I was definitely overweight. No matter how many people would tell me I looked good, I didn’t feel good at all, either about the way I looked or about the way I felt.

I would engage in crazy gym challenges and diets and, needless to say, it only worked out for a short period of time. And then, everything would start all over again.

I won’t go into the guilt or the shame that battle brought along. That’s not the reason I’m writing this.

Back in 2015, I started doing some major spiritual and self-development healing work on myself, and around that time, after hitting a threshold of physical pain in my joints, I could hear my body shouting out loud that it was time for a deep change.

I could feel this time the decision was coming from a totally different place inside of me… I was certain I was going to change!

And I did! I started taking care of the food I would put in my body, and I started to feel awesome, lighter and more energised than ever. The joint pain completely disappeared, and I could move my body in ways that I couldn’t before. 

I was feeling AMAZING! Had I finally owned this? Was it really possible? I was so HAPPY!

In January 2017, I had a surgery to an epigastric hernia, and it didn’t take long for me to realise I was going back to the old patterns, and I was bullshitting myself with a bunch of excuses to eat some cookies late in the evening, or even to have some chips twice a week.

My belly started getting bigger (I don’t know about you, but for me it’s always the belly!) and I would fool myself telling myself that it was due to the hernia surgery. 

There was a thought running over and over in my mind - “NOT AGAIN!”
And the more I heard it, the more I didn’t want to look at it, and the more cookies I felt like eating. (By the way, I would make sure the cookies were the healthy kind of cookies, fooling myself that those were not a big deal.)

One day, with love, no judgement whatsoever, and as curious as I could be, I decided it was time to go deeper to find out the real root of this, since it was clear I was not healed yet.

I knew that in this internal system of making decisions there should be a belief that was making me sabotage my outcome. 

Sitting outside, with the help of Tony Robbins’ book Awaken the Giant Within, EUREKA! I had a f*cking breakthrough, and then others followed! (Wow … multiple breakthroughs?! Oh… yes, there’s more than just multiple orgasms! ;) )

I realised I took a lot of pleasure out of the process of losing weight. It gave me a challenge to pursue, and I would get an immense sense of accomplishment and big achievement in succeeding at losing weight. Now… guess what? You got it! For me to be able to engage in that challenge of losing weight, to begin with I would need to have weight to lose.  I would put on weight to engage in the process of being successful at losing it afterwards (how fucked up is that?!).

And then, another breakthrough… Succeeding at losing weight would make me feel really significant! Others would notice me and the weight loss, and they would tell me “Oh, you lost weight!” or “Hum, you look thinner!”, but what I would hear them say was “you look awesome”, “you look pretty”.

But deep down what that really meant was — “I SEE YOU!”

BOOOMMMM… another massive breakthrough hitting me hard.
I had created this belief that others would never see me, that I was unnoticeable! So, I ended up finding a way to have people look at me.

You see, my sister, who is one year younger than me, is so beautiful and for as long as I can remember being a child, every time we would go anywhere with our parents, everybody would look at her, and comment on how beautiful she was and how beautiful her eyes were. Hardly ever anyone would notice me and when they did, they would turn to me in second place, and say “oh… and you… you are beautiful too”. (Today I imagine myself showing them the finger! ;) )

I was only 2 or 3 years old (yes, I know… I have a great memory… and I can go even further back in time – amazing what babies can remember, right?) and that was how I perceived and experienced the events; that was the meaning I gave to them, and from there I made a decision, and soon a limiting belief was born.

And as time went by, life made sure to provide me enough evidence to prove me that I was right. That’s what beliefs do. I had become the creator of a self-fulfilling prophecy! 

Now that I uncovered the root cause, healing can finally begin!

Me and my sister :)

If you are curious about the questions that helped me uncover this story, or if there’s something you want to change in your life, I share more in my other article.

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The Question That Shaped My Life

Back in December 2016, I was at Tony Robbins’s six-day seminar in Florida, Date with Destiny and there I had A LOT of breakthroughs (another word for that would be insight). For those of you who have not been to a TR event or haven’t heard much about him, the best thing you can do to understand what he is truly about is to watch the documentary I’m Not Your Guru on Netflix.

One of the countless things I’ve learned from Tony Robbins is that QUESTIONS determine your focus, and what you focus on is what you experience and what you get from life.

So, today I want to tell you about a major aha moment I had with what he calls the PRIMARY QUESTION.

A Primary Question is a dominant question you ask yourself on a consistent basis, and that filters your thinking (conscious and unconscious). It’s a question that pops up constantly across contexts. Even if you aren’t consciously aware of it, you believe that if you live by this question, you will feel ultimate success, pleasure and fulfilment. Your identity is often tied to this question. You experience life through the lenses of it.

Now that you know what a primary question is, let me share with you what MY primary question has been for 44 years.

I have lived my life through the lens of this question — “How can I make this better?”.

For me, life, in all its areas, was always about improving, making better, making more effective, more inspirational, more impactful. I was always looking for ways to make anything, I mean, ANYTHING better.

The magical thing about having a “aha” moment with Tony Robbins is that he always makes sure you find the higher intent behind any of your behaviour / decision / emotion. So, not only was I able to uncover that primary question, but to also see both the benefits and the downsides of it.

As TR also teaches us, first let’s go for the UPSIDES of that. What were the empowering effects that came about for asking that question? What did that question do for me?

Well, here’s what I found out: to consistently ask myself that question, I believed that there’s always a better way; that there’s always space for improvement; that change is needed, and that change is something positive. I learned not to settle, to become more creative and more determined.

And what about the DOWNSIDES? What did that cost me?

I must confess this was a very deep and emotional moment. When I was face to face with the truth of it, I cried as I became aware that I was always too hard on myself, always demanding too much from me; I didn’t enjoy being myself because I was always looking for ways to make ME better, and that means in some moments I was making ME wrong.

I would always try to “fix” others and make them better, as if there was anything wrong with them… Can you imagine how I have made people feel in the past? OMG, so many things I did wrong with my kids and my relationships. It’s a fact that what I did to myself I would do to others. I know I did the best I could with the resources I had but it hurt like hell to think about the pain I caused, especially to my kids.

TR helped me find out WHY I had that as my primary question.

For some reason (well, like I said I had a lot of breakthroughs, so I know the reason, but I’ll tell you about that in another post) I had this belief that if I didn’t make things better, more inspirational, more impactful, etc., people wouldn’t notice me, I would be unseen, which means I would be ignored, which means I would be insignificant, which means I wouldn’t be loved.

What a scary frightened little girl there was living inside of me!

So now, I cherish and nurture that part of me, the scary one, the one looking for love and significance. And I also forgave myself for the pain I caused to my kids.

If we are always looking for ways to make things/people better, we are not allowing space for things/people to be just the way they are.

Many times, WE just want to be loved, THEY just want to be loved, I just want to be loved… unconditionally loved, being imperfectly perfect.

And there are moments that we just need to BE and not DO. After all, are we human beings or human doings?

So… I am so thrilled and excited to share with you my NEW Primary Question –

“How can I appreciate even more the beauty and the perfection of what is in this present moment, trusting that I am always guided?”

Can you imagine how different my life will be having this question as a filtering lens?

Now, I’m curious to know…

What is a question you repeatedly ask yourself? What do you consistently focus on? What question do you ask most often based on this focus?

It’s my deepest wish that this story may help you in some way, and I would love to know what your primary question is. So, please leave your comment below.

And remember, YOU are imperfectly perfect.

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