What I loved about our conversation was getting to talk about fear openly. I feel like I’ve come out of the closet about fear and like someone who just stopped smoking or discovered they love fruitcake, I want to tell everybody I can what I’m learning about fear.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

• Shame and fear are linked; we can feel ashamed for feeling afraid because we should only be happy and grateful, especially if we have done a lot of inner work or have a roof over our heads. It can be very hard to admit we are afraid.
• We can feel we are doing something wrong if we feel fear or anxiety. If we just ate better, meditated more, trusted in the Universe more, had invested more wisely, we wouldn’t feel this way
• While we are each afraid of different things (money, illness, aging parents, getting our creative businesses off the ground, finding love), we all need the same thing: a way to access, to source, calm and comfort, that is not dependent on what is happening in our lives. We each get to that source comfort in different ways but we all have the capacity to experience comfort no matter what.
• While it imperative to let yourself realize and feel you are afraid without pushing it away, it’s equally vital to  remember that you are the queen / king of your life; You are the one who gets to choose. Fear does not have to impress you nor does it automatically get to run your life.
• Letting yourself be afraid without running a big story about how bad you are for being afraid or how you will always feel this way or if just this was different, you wouldn’t be afraid, prolongs the ick.

I’m working away on the Comfort Summit and the new membership site… today had the idea to turn the Summit into more of a four day retreat… more comforting and safe feeling, me thinks.

Back at it!  Love love love!

The experiment is off to a grand soul tonifying start…I was so enthralled and felt so with each of you as your comments came in… Thank you!

I’m (yet again) amazed by the power of awareness. Awareness rocks!

What I learned (warning: I learned a lot)

By lovingly being aware of my pattern which was (is):

… jumping into action without asking myself what I want or what feels good,

(otherwise known as speediness)

and by knowing that you were being aware of your pattern and we would come back here and check-in about how our paying attention shifted or didn’t shift things, I learned so much, it pretty much bowls me over.

As you know, I’m working on a slew of stuff around Comfort During Uncertain Times, around fear and change and uncertainty . But last Sunday, I got the wild hair to do this very simple, very quick project… (go ahead, chuckle knowingly) which was to compile and edit the short audios I’ve been doing over the years (I call them Mood Changers), and maybe just create a couple of new ones and record maybe a few of my Comfort Wishes and get these all on to a CD and package with my books for holiday gifts…

I was sure doing this would only take a day, two at the most.

It took all week.

And as the week progressed, I was aware of how my hurry-up-and-get-it-done-pattern is helping to perpetuate the key issues I’m struggling with in my business. But you may say, so what? You still did it. To which I say and I learned so much — which is the main reason, besides loving, we are alive and by the by, the only way we change– so there!

I learned:

• That I don’t allow enough time for projects.
• That asking myself, “Are you sure you want to do this project?” made me do a little due diligence to make sure the project made sense which is good business.
• To accept that doing this project would take longer than I thought and that was okay.
• The link between wanting to be special and original in all I create and hurrying up is huge and important and I will be paying more attention to that link going forward.
• How I have a story that doing a lot fast and working long hours is exciting and interesting and makes my life more meaningful but as soon I’m actually doing a lot and working long hours, I want to be hiking in the woods with the doodle dogs and going to yoga class and talking on the phone with my best friend Barbra. In other words, I actually like balance.

• BIG NOTICE: Speediness contributes to me being all over the map and getting sucked into the lottery syndrome and thus not building the systems that will allow me to be creatively, steadily productive.

… Pause while I breath and pat myself on the back as I really want to turn away from this learning and check email or otherwise distract myself but I’m going to sit still and breath….

…Because I’ve seen this pattern before and that’s why being willing to look at our patterns means we are terrifically brave. I first wrote about this speedy all over the map tendency of mine in February 2006 and again in April 2007.

A lull in writing while Jen appreciates this fact.

Another lull while Jen ponders how awareness of our patterns and accepting those patterns without immediately running to change them are so intimately linked to loving ourselves.

Another lull while Jen wonders about her friend Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s powerful question, “What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?” and what that has to do with loving our patterns.

Whew! That was a whole heck of a lot of understanding going on there… loving myself for staying with it…loving myself for seeing it yet again… hoping you are loving yourself, too.

Because Choosing Your Life Mondays is not never ever an invitation to beat yourself up!

And now, drum roll, the Choose Your Life Monday focus for this week:

This week I will lovingly notice my pattern of wanting to do everything yesterday (aka speediness) and let myself stop and feel the creative urges behind that speediness

(That may sound a little vague and I’m sensing that my speediness and my love of life are intimately entwined and that stopping to feel that link, while scary as all get out, will be very revealing.)

I won’t try to change what I’m doing, I’ll simply stop and feel.

Want to join me? Name your pattern in the comment section. You can name the same pattern from last week, if you played last week. Or you may want to tweak yours a tad. Try to keep it simple. Which I have not really modeled.

And if you wish, join me in sharing your reflections on what you noticed about your pattern this past week. Or not! Certainly I will not be processing this long every week! Trust me on that.

That is progress, dear sweetie Jen, that is progress. Big pat on heart.

And On to the List Thing

I’ve got a thrilling announcement (okay thrilling to me, hopefully to you, too) and it’s a direct result of all my writing and reading and thinking about fear and uncertainty this last six weeks and all these blog posts.  I’m working on an audio series and e-book and maybe a virtual retreat.

It’s all about helping ease and be with and not be stopped by fear and uncertainty, and I got waylaid for the last two weeks by this groovy project:

Comfort Summit 2009: How to Find Courage and Success When Uncertain Times Make You Afraid

(This is the big fat hairy goal I was talking about earlier.)
It’s a virtual summit of the world’s best self-care and self-acceptance experts (and really, I mean the world’s best), an online comfort-fest conference slated for early January – and it’s going to give you the targeted wisdom you need now to stay aware and awake and even (is it possible?) (yes it is!) thrive in these  uncertain times.  This is a once-in-a-life time opportunity to learn the most beneficial and effective methods, insights and ideas from my friends and colleagues–each expert selected because they can give you right now exactly what you need to dissolve fear and embrace change.

Best-selling authors like Geneen Roth, Barbara Sher, destuckfication expert Havi Brooks, effortless success coach Michael Neill, master coach and interfaith minister Laura Berman Fortgang, and great work guru Michael Bungay Stainer are on board for a fantastic event that’s is aimed at giving you the tools, the inspiration and the support to navigate these uncertain times so you can be part of the positive change we each crave.

It’s going to be as incredible as it is affordable.

And as a heart-felt thank-you to you for reading my blog, I’m going to offer a big fat discount when we start taking registrations to everyone on my Preferred Subscriber list.  If saving money on this life-changing, fun, comforting event interests you, then please sign up for the Preferred Subscriber list below so you’ll be able to get the limited-time discount.

Sign up here - just takes a minute.
And if you already signed up on this blog for a special list, we’ll transfer your name for you. And if you aren’t sure you did, then go sign up. Just to be sure.

I love you!

I did.

Make a big fat hairy goal, that is.

A BFHG, man, a BFHG.

It involves asking very famous big people to do something with me.

That meant inviting them.

Gulp.

So right now, I’m typing on a keyboard covered with Swiss cheese oil (you know, the kind that oozes out of a rice tortilla when you’ve nuked the cheese too long) and checking my email every three minutes to see if the people I admire so much have said yes.

And every time I check my email, I feel this frisson of what?  Fear? Terror?

It’s just sensation until a thought comes along to interpret that sensation.

“Oh you are afraid this won’t work and you’ll never do anything again and people don’t like you and blah blah blah.”

Then my favorite thought, “You shouldn’t be afraid. You’re more evolved than that.”

What can I do?  Take myself by the hand (and take Bob’s hand and the dog’s) (paws).

Tell myself I really can hang out right here, without knowing everything is going to turn out the way I want it, I can hang out here and breath and really, pinkie swear, it’s okay. I’m in the unknown. Which is actually where I always am!

And then, miracles of miracles, I realize I’m not afraid.

I’m excited.

I’m alive.

Could it be that sometimes, just sometimes, fear lies in our interpretation? Of events, of sensations, of thoughts even. Add a little hand  holding and breathing and hey, whew, maybe this isn’t so bad.

What do you think?

P.S.

The picture Bob took in Ulaaaaaanbaaaaator (which is not the actual way you spell the coldest capital city in the world but I asked him to spell it for me and he told me this was the way you spelled it because he likes to tease me).  It’s really Ulaanbaator, Mongolia, where he works from time to time. The phone company was  installing fiber optics and people in the street jumped into help.

I posted this picture because being with fear, dissolving it, understanding it, is so much about hand holding i.e. asking for help. Which I have been, in a big way. Marketing help from the amazing Kay Ballard. From my best friend Barbra. Love from my Brain Trust. Support from my wonderful mom. Help from Havi and Naomi and Molly and Michael. A coaching client said to me yesterday how much coaching helped ease fear of launching her new career and it’s also so true. Support heals.

Are you getting any?