I think some of you might have already picked that I love writing, analysing, observing. Writing things down actually helps me to process and I know from my yoga work that sharing my processing helps others to do the same. So if these posts with my ramblings don’t resonate, just scroll past.

So Fear – its a rather close friend of mine. She’s been with me ever since I remember. I was never adventurous as a child and afraid of most things. I liked quite play with the dolls, the shop, gardening, handwork, watching tv. As long as I was in my comfort at home I was fine. I hated the thought of going on class trips or summer camps. Lucky for my tender nature back then there wasn’t much adventure available anyway, so that suited me just fine.

One of my ex-boyfriends even bought me an east german classic children story called “Der kleine Angsthase” (The little scared rabbit).

When I became I a teenager a rather strange new friend joined the party. She was called Brave and almost as stubborn as Fear, but not quite as strong and developed. Fear was and is still definitely top dog. Brave is standing its ground more often though and as I grow older the dynamics have changed. Fear is growing old and boring. Brave is becoming top dog. If you watch from the sidelines observing yourself that internal battle is actually quite entertaining, sometimes all encompassing and other times tiring and overwhelming.

Being an equal partner in our family adventure I had to come face to face with so many fears over and over again and I can tell you its an exhausting process, but I am also retraining my subconscious from those most annoying immediate fear responses to relaxing myself and trusting in the process. Luckily Tim is more of a risk taker and seemingly a natural adventurer and the kids just laugh about me – thankfully they didn’t inherit my fearfulness.

The point I am wanting to make here is if you are fearful as I am, there are ways to overcome it and live to your full potential. Most of our fears are unfounded anyway – just mind chatter, noise. We have to find the off button.

At a time when I was getting overwhelmed by my fears and worries I found the perfect book – “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I never ceases to amaze me how the right things just come to me when I most need them.

The book is about creativity and inspirations and fear and how we can live with them all in harmony. How we can act on those sparks of inspiration despite our fear and how we miss out when fear wins and our ideas find someone else to become reality.

I am one of those people that usually underline, mark and dog ear pages in books, but since I am limited to a kindle at the moment I took some notes of the passages that really resonated with me that I wanted to share here, because I know I am not the only one who is fearful. I have only just started the book, so this is by no means a full account of the inspirations I will gather from this book. But I can highly recommend it already.

“He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. Most of all, though he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realise the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery their lives would remain small, far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.”

“Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

“When I talk about creative living I am talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear”

“Bravery means doing something scary. Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word scary means.”

And a final spark of inspiration:
” Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart” R.T. Bennett