February 2017 - Judith Johnson

It took me until my 60’s to deconstruct the persistent patterns of worries, fears and self-doubt that were preventing me from being the best version of myself I knew I could be. Along the way, I realized that I wasn’t the only woman doing this particular dance. As one who has always been compelled to help others, I recognized this was a key area where I wanted to serve others as well as myself once I figured out what was going on.

My journey taught me to study and practice new ways of seeing myself and the world. The perennial wisdom teachings at the root of most spiritual traditions nourished me with an understanding of the necessity of love, kindness and compassion in our relationships with ourselves and others. Participating in a multitude of personal growth trainings and working one-on-one with master practitioners of various healing modalities taught me to inhabit my own body, mind, heart, soul and life journey bearing responsibility for myself and my choices. Finally, studying the field of human consciousness taught me exactly how we go about creating, promoting and allowing ourselves to be as we are and how we can change our experience of ourselves and the world by simply changing our perceptions and attitudes.

In 2016 this all coalesced into what has become my latest book, The 11 Keys to Consciously Thriving – a book to read until you live it by heart. While my writings, mentoring and speaking serve both men and women, I have chosen to work primarily with smart, talented women with inner callings who find themselves held back by worries, fears and self-doubt. I believe that women today have a very important role to play in shifting our cultural consciousness and our life priorities.

Later this year, I will be launching free, monthly, live on-line conversations focusing on women raising consciousness in the 21^st century. Most of us have too little time to nurture our friendships and be together with other women. It is my hope that these on-line conversations will remind us to spend more time together – loving, caring, and supporting each other as we find our way forward.

Along these lines, I am enamored with the work of Tara Mohr and her concept of women being called to be on “The Transition Team” . In Playing Big, Mohr says:

. . .when women play bigger, they change the world for the better, and – more precisely – they bring forward what is missing. . . . They call out the failings of the status quo. They bring forward a more enlightened, humane way. .. . .It’s time to shift the women’s movement paradigm, from one of participation to one of transformation. . . .more and more women are finding that they want more than equal access to participation in outdated, often harmful systems. We want to transform those systems to make them more just, more compassionate, more sustainable for the planet and for our families. We want to add our ideas, our alternatives, our ways of working. In other words, now that we have more power, we want to use it for good. [p 246-247]

. . . . Today women have access to participate in a public life, a professional life, and a political life that is not yet reflective of women’s voices or women’s ways of thinking, doing, and working. That means that as we participate in those realms, we’ll often feel like outsiders, like strangers in a strange land. It’s our job to not run away from that but, instead, take up our small piece of the transition team’s work, sharing our ideas, our voices, our callings in a way that is authentic to us. By so doing, we’ll create a more balanced, sane culture, one reflective of both men’s and women’s voices. [p 250]

And so, my own work now focuses on helping other women to deconstruct persistent patterns of self-doubt, worries and concerns so they can raise their voices as they are called to do so in their own unique way. To find out more about how I might help you to step forward in your calling, please explore my website, especially my Mentoring page and The Thriving Studio.

It’s so exciting to see other women stepping forward with more guts than fear to add their contributions to the quality of our individual and collective lives. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Am I listening to my deeper calling?
Do I have the guts to go for it in spite of my fears, worries and self-doubt?
What’s at stake if I don’t go for it?
What’s possible if I do go for it?

I’ve never met a woman who didn’t doubt herself in some way. Our doubts and fears can either paralyze us or we can learn to hold steady in their presence, assess their content, diminish their power and move forward in spite of them. It all boils down to how much power we give our doubts and fears.

It helps to know what doubts and fears are and that they really have a positive side to them. Imagine being a little girl who is just learning to walk and those moments when you maybe took a few steps farther away from your mom than you were comfortable with and ran back and threw your arms around her thigh. Safety! That’s the feeling of our comfort zone. It’s largely an unconscious pull to stay where we feel safe and able to manage the options of what is familiar. But, stepping outside into the unknown territory of what might happen if you move too far away from the familiar can be disorienting, unsettling and scary. Crossing that line is when doubts and fears can either send you running for the safety of the familiar or present you with the opportunity to expand your comfort zone.

Think of doubts and fears as simply red flags that alert you to the fact that you are entering your uncomfortable zone. “Get back! Get back!” they scream. Imagine that instead of impulsively running back to safety you simply said, “Oh, thank you. It’s OK. I’ll take a look and decide what to do.” What if you developed sufficient confidence and trust in your own ability to effectively evaluate whatever possible challenge comes your way and no longer felt the need to run for safety? What if you began to feel safe even in the presence of doubts and fears?

Consider the fact that doubts and fears are nothing but figments of your own imagination. They are the creation of thoughts and pictures in your mind that represent what you are most afraid will happen if you don’t run back to safety. Perhaps you have heard the acronyms for the word Fear:

Fantasy Expectations Appearing Real

False Evidence Appearing Real

The sense of reality that fears carry is solely fueled by emotional investment in these possibilities. Indeed, we can talk ourselves into or out of just about anything.

Most of us have autopilot responses to our fears – a set point of how much uncertainty and fearful possibilities we can tolerate. But guess what? You can change the setting! Just start creating and investing in some positive figments of your imagination and start investing in them emotionally. Dialogue with your fears.

There is also the fine art of pretending to not be afraid – feeling the fear and doing whatever it is you are afraid of anyway. That’s something I learned to do as a young child as the youngest of three siblings. My mother used to tell stories of how she would take us to the doctors to get a shot and the other two would run and hide from the doctor and I would step forward in front of him, puff out my chest, put my hands on my hips and declare, “I’m not afraid!” But the truth was I was just as fearful as they were – it was my way of pretending to be more grown up than I was in hopes that they would accept and include me more.

Other great techniques to stabilize yourself in the presence of fear include such things as breathing into the fear, acknowledging the fear and consciously choosing to override it by creating more favorable imaginings and choosing to maintain your sense of well-being in the presence of doubts and fears. Remember, fears and doubts are just doing their job to help you feel safe inside so they throw up scary images whenever you are overstepping your comfort zone. But here’s the deal – we never know until we try. Look at your life and ask yourself are there things I really want to experience that I am forfeiting for the sake of feeling comfortable? What do I need to do to reassure myself when I get afraid or start second-guessing myself? It’s your choice – keep running for safety or explore and expand and find out what you are capable of doing, having and being. Playing it safe costs you a world of possibilities.

What is Your Deeper Calling and Are You Answering the Call?

Women Who Doubt Themselves

Archive for month: February, 2017