How To Push Through Your Fears

In the moments it matters most.

Eight years ago, I was in a relationship that just wasn’t working. We wanted different things out of life.

We differed in the day-to-day and in our ideas around what a life well-lived meant. How we wanted to spend our time. What an ideal partnership looked like - what level of support, intimacy, love, connection, time spent together - meant. It just… didn’t fit. But also, there was nothing “wrong” that I could pinpoint with direct clarity - ‘this is it, this thing is the reason it’s not working!’

I was medium happy.

Have you ever been medium happy? You know, it’s like nothing is so bad, but you just have this underlying ‘meh’ about you? 

You think, “Maybe I should just be grateful? Maybe that’s my problem? That I’m not seeing the best in the situation? It must be me! I just need to change my perspective.” So you start practicing gratitude and looking for all the things that you do feel good about, and think that maybe this will start to turn things around for you…

And, maybe it does help light the spark for a little bit of time, but slowly over the next few weeks or so, you start to feel that ‘meh’ again? 

You start wanting change. Something different. You start to wonder what your life could look and feel like if you had everything you actually wanted. And then you almost feel guilty thinking about wanting more, because nothing is really wrong. 

Medium happy.

You know that saying ‘If you can’t change your circumstances, change your perspective’? While I have a lot of opinions about that 😆😉, and it may apply to some situations, the thing is, is that you can change your circumstances when you’re in a medium happy relationship (and a medium happy place in life in general!). I tried changing my perspective, but I found myself feeling the same way - even after conscious effort to find the good things I loved within the situation - because at the end of the day, the relationship was just not right for me.

I wanted more. I was meant for more.

This is where the walk towards jumping off the cliff started to rise within me, in pursuit of becoming ALL THE WAY happy.

Leaving that relationship was a major moment of walking towards the cliff’s edge. It wasn’t just a breakup, it was a breakup at age 30 (in hindsight, not a big deal at all, but at the time, the stakes felt a little higher?). It was packing up my stuff out of the apartment we shared (which takes weeks of one person sleeping on the couch and excruciatingly packing up their stuff in front of the other person, box by box…) It was sleeping in my friend’s guest room in the basement for a month, while I tried to figure out what the heck I was doing with my life. 

But, I just knew that if I didn’t walk towards the cliff, I would be stuck in medium happy for the long run.

That decision was the catalyst of the most transformative year of my life, and one that directly led to where I am today. But the thing is, I almost didn’t go through with it. Why?

Because I had MAJOR resistance and fears popping up all over the place!

If I hadn’t taken steps to finesse my fears and work with them, I would have let them dictate my actions, and I would have missed out on the magic that followed… I wouldn’t have pushed through and taken the major jump off the cliff a few months later, when I decided to pack up my car and move to LA. Which led towards the last 7 years of working behind the scenes running online businesses, traveling to Mexico, NY, Charleston, Zion, Joshua Tree… and working with clients. It led to getting married and moving to an island where I lived with the ocean as my backyard, watching the seals and dolphins and eagles every morning, and becoming pregnant with my daughter. 

All because I pushed through my resistance, walked towards the cliff’s edge and jumped, in committed pursuit to being ALL THE WAY happy.

And I could not have done so without figuring out how to work with my fears, instead of letting them run the show.

So, here are 4 tips on how to get friendly with your fears, push through them, and start walking towards your own cliff’s edge.

Why?

Because you deserve more than being medium happy in your own damn life! 

1) Begin to pay attention to your resistance and fears. Start to familiarize yourself with them, and get to know them.

This is one of my favorite personal practices, and one that I work with clients on very closely. We all have resistance that comes up in different areas in our lives. If we grew up hearing “money doesn’t grow on trees”, we might find we have a lot of resistance to spending our money on things we feel are ‘frivolous’ as adults - nice vacations, first class plane tickets, nice clothes, nice dinners out, etc. etc. Most of us let these points of resistance dictate our lives, keeping us small or stuck, until we start to familiarize and befriend them - essentially, build a relationship with them.

We start this process by bringing awareness to them. Digging into them and figuring out where they came from and when we inherited the beliefs around them. We look at where and how these beliefs are playing out in our lives, how it’s affecting us, and how we view the world. We excavate.

2) Let the voices in your head come up and through. Let the fears talk to you. Give them their 15 minutes of fame in your body and mind. 

When the fear voices pop up to say hello, don’t immediately move to trying to squash them back down. Let them breathe and have a moment. Maybe even write them out in a journal to get them out of your head and onto paper. By becoming a witness to your fears, you’re not letting them unconsciously rule your life and your choices anymore. You’re giving them the center stage they desire to try to keep you safe, for a limited amount of time.

3) Now, consciously start your cycle of change.

This is where most people get stuck. This is where staying small happens. Staying medium happy happens. 

Starting a cycle of change for yourself is hard work, and it is not linear. But, this is where your transformation begins! You have to overtake your normal pattern of listening to your resistance and fears, and you have to consciously say “thank you for caring about me and trying to keep me safe, but no thank you, I’m doing something different, in spite of what you are telling me.” 

This can be a real conversation you have with yourself! When I was facing my greatest moments of resistance during this breakup, there were SO many times where I almost gave in and thought, ‘you know what, I’m happy enough and it’s just easier to stay’. I had to have a conscious conversation with myself in those moments - literally, I talked to myself out loud. I distinctly remember actually saying, “No Sabrina, we are not staying stuck. You are going to pursue what makes you excited and happy. You are choosing you. Say yes to trying.” It whipped me back into the moment, and I kept packing my boxes. 

4) Keep practicing. 

Pushing through your resistance and fears is not a one-time thing. They will come up again and again and again, usually in each step while you are transforming into something new. And so, keep practicing. Strengthen your fear muscle. There are a million ways to do this. Try them all! (You know I’m going to be sending paid subscribers some tools and exercises around this 😉🔥💋) 

Let this be a fun and engaging practice you gift yourself. Because the more you engage with the curriculum of befriending your resistance and fears, the more unstoppable you will become.

The bigger your life might become.

And you deserve to be ALL THE WAY happy. ❤️‍🔥🦄💘