Recently I’ve mentioned how fear can be a massive plateau-creator. (Is that a word? I guess it is now.) We hold onto extra body fat, and actually a lot of things in our life can be caused by fear, even fears at a subconscious level. I shared a lot of times the story of hitting my plateau at 215 lbs because I finally uncovered this fear that if I dropped under 215 lbs then I would lose everything. I feared that because when I had been under 215 lbs before, I had been homeless.
I want to teach a very simple technique that can be used literally to obliterate any fear. It is so simple. It’s called the Fear to Funny technique.
I can still remember a nightmare that I had when I was six years old. In this nightmare, I was the observer. Have you ever had a nightmare like that? Where you are looking on to these events and because you are the observer, you are powerless to do anything about it? Well, I was watching these events take place on the edge of this really long cliff. At the bottom of the cliff was the ocean and large jagged rocks, and these people were playing this game where they would walk backwards and see how far they could get to the edge of the cliff without falling off. Brilliant, right? I remember watching them get closer and closer to the edge of this cliff. I kept wanting to shout out, “STOP! Don’t get any closer, or you’re gonna fall off and die!” This major feeling came over me like, “something bad is going to happen!”
It was crazy because the fear of this nightmare kept me awake every night for years. It haunted me for years because a lot of times I would go to fall asleep, I would lie in bed and shut my eyes, and then suddenly the image of this cliff would come back to my mind, and I would suddenly feel the emotional charge of that fear again. This kept happening every night, keeping me awake with fear for two years. Until I finally did something really interesting that I want to show you here.
The first step in obliterating any fear is to recognize what the fear is and to write it down. In this case, let’s say that the fear is, “Something bad is going to happen.” Grab a piece of paper and write down whatever the fear is, and try to sum it up in one or two sentences, most fears can be summed up like that. Whether it’s, “I’m afraid I’m going to fail,” or “If I do this, then that will happen,” or whatever it is. Sum up the fear in a sentence and write it down.
From there, you want to draw some type of visual representation of the fear. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, just draw some type of image. For example, if I were working on the fear of this nightmare, I would actually draw a picture of that cliff.
I once did this with one of my mentoring clients, and he just felt like there was this black cloud around him. He couldn’t really put a name to it, but when I had him draw this visual image, he kind of drew this fuzz ball scribble. I asked, “When you see this image, you can feel that emotional charge of your fear?” He said, “Yeah! It’s just kind of like this dark cloud around me.” Again, draw some type of visual representation of that fear.
This works really great with kids too, especially when they have nightmares. I use this with my 7-year-old daughter all the time, and it works great.
From there, you want to modify the image to make it silly, goofy, funny, or just plain weird. In my mind back when I was 8 years-old, remember this nightmare had haunted me for two years, I gave this cliff this really goofy looking face. I imagined that when people came close to the cliff, it would go, “HI! How ya’ doin? Hi!” And I thought, “It’s a friendly cliff.” Again, in my mind, the cliff had this great big nose, a cheesy smile, and people would come close to the cliff, and he’d say, “Hi, how ya doin?” And he had such a big nose that if somebody fell off, they would go “boing!” and go right back up to the clifftop. I thought, “It’s a friendly cliff!”
Again, modify the image to make it silly, goofy, or whatever. And then here is the important part: After you modify it, these are the words you want to say, “Oh, that’s just… (fill in blank with what the new image is).” And then you say, “That can’t harm me.” In this case, I would say, “Oh, that’s a friendly cliff. That can’t harm me.” Simply saying that phrase allows your brain to reassess the situation. If it can’t harm you, then your mind has no reason to fear it. The reason why, is the definition of fear is, “Anticipation of discomfort.” If your subconscious mind believes that something (person, situation, change, etc) is going to be uncomfortable or painful, that is what causes the fear. If your brain then understands that it can’t cause you discomfort, it can’t cause you harm, then that allows your fear to dissipate. Again, you modify the image to make it silly, goofy, or just weird, and then you say, “Oh, that’s just (whatever the new silly image is). That can’t harm me.”
You then take the positive opposite of whatever the fear statement was, and you turn it into a loving affirmation. The positive opposite of “something bad is going to happen,” could be, “Something amazing is coming!” You then cross the old fear statement out, and you write, “Something amazing is coming,” or whatever your new loving affirmation is.
Step #1 Identify the fear, and you write it down.
Step #2 You make some type of visual representation of that fear.
Step #3 You modify the image to make it silly, goofy, or humorous, and you say, “Oh, that’s just…(whatever the new image is). That can’t harm me.”
Step #4 You turn the fear around. Find the positive opposite of the fear, and you turn it into a loving affirmation, like, “Something amazing is coming!” and you say that out loud.
(You can just do this all in your mind if you want to. A lot of times my clients come in to see me at the clinics, and I’ll just have them do this in their mind. But, if you can do it on paper, that’s even better. Writing it down takes it one level deeper
Back to the story of my client who when he did this exercise, it just looked like a dark cloud, and when he turned it around, he went, “Oh, that kinda looks like my hair in the morning!” So he drew a head under the “dark cloud” scribble, and he said, “Oh, that’s just my hair in the morning! That can’t harm me.” Then he stated his loving affirmation, and it totally obliterated that fear of his.
Try this! It doesn’t have to do with weight reduction, it could be with business, asking a special someone out on a date. I dare you to try this!
Utilize this, then I dare you to try and think of that fear, and it may just be gone. Try this, and let me know in the comments what you have done this with, and what kind of difference it made for you.
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