Faith over Fear: Stop Resisting Your Goals

Have you ever questioned the path you’re on? Do you feel confident about where you’re supposed to be, but doubt that you’re taking the right steps to get there? Do you ever doubt your ability to make something happen?

You have a dream, a goal, something you really want.

But something keeps you from fully going for it. Time and time again, this idea plugs itself in your head. You dabble in the idea of it for a minute, then give up.

And it comes back.

What we resist persists.

I’ve recently added a new venture to my work-from-home life. At a time when I already felt too busy to seek new work, I decided to take on network marketing and start something completely from scratch. Great idea, right?

This past Christmas Eve, I had an aha moment when I opened my mom’s kitchen cabinet to see her incredible display of doTERRA essential oils. I should sell these! I thought.

The thought surprised me. I’ve tried the network marketing stint before and stressed myself silly. I’m not a sales person and couldn’t imagine myself asking people to buy pricey products.

But I know and love the oils. I’ve experienced some amazing improvements in my stress levels and digestive issues since I started using them a year ago. This unexpected thought felt right.

It became clear just how much of a “calling” this was when Kyle and I were coming back from our honeymoon. DoTERRA had an incentive trip to Cancun during the same week we were in Riviera Maya, and guess who we randomly ended up next to on the plane ride home? A whole crew of doTERRA wellness advocates.

So, I took the sign and got on it. I enrolled, started watching zillions of training videos, and I booked my first Essential Oils 101 classes.

Then, I freaked out.

I watched my mentors teach the first class and thought there was no way I could do what they were doing. I can hardly make phone calls, let alone be the lead speaker in front of a group of people for an hour. What was I thinking getting started in this?

In the next few days, every new episode on the podcasts I subscribe to and every article that popped up in my Feedly pointed me to the valuable lesson I was meant to take away from that class. (Isn’t it funny how the outside world tends to align with whatever is on your mind?)

If you’ve ever had a dream, spent hours reading everything out there on taking the leap, and then abandoned it…keep reading. Hopefully the lessons I learned will help you get to the root of the problem and start executing.

Get to the Root of Your Resistance

The morning after my first essential oils class, I was completely conflicted. Everything had been pointing me toward this business, but the first class left me terrified and doubting myself. As I stretched that morning, (I have a goal of hitting the splits #wannabegymnast), I listened to a timely episode on the School of Greatness podcast: Transform Resistance Into Freedom & Success with Chris Lee.

This 40-minute interview put things in perspective for me. Coach Chris gives valuable insights for transforming internal resistance into surrender and freedom. I’ll go through my takeaways here, but I highly recommend you check out the episode.

Chris first advises getting to the root of your resistance. What are you afraid of? What is it that scares you away from the path to your goal? Be clear and honest about the fear that holds you back.

I have a fear of public speaking. Not only public – I’m pretty terrified of speaking in general. I constantly dwell on if I’m talking too much, whether I said the right thing and whether I’m coming off the right way. Side note: this is why I write for a living!

But I’m also deeply afraid of wasting time, and this fear limits me just as much. I’m a freelancer, and there are several decisions to be made every day about what projects I take on, how I earn money and where I focus my time. I have several ideas I want to explore, but fear of my time not paying off holds me back from even trying many of them out.

This brings me to Chris’s next enlightening tip.

Embrace the Fear

As a writer, I’m used to rejection. I can send off email pitches and not flinch a bit when a rejection comes back. But being denied in person? Hearing someone say “no,” seeing the disapproval on their face – I’ll be in tears.

Embrace the things that scare you.

My husband further encouraged me to embrace my fear of speaking. He challenged me to make conversation with everyone I come across in the day – the clerk at the grocery store, the bank teller, even people online. Explore. Ask questions. Be weird, he said.

I’ve been experimenting with this for the past few weeks. If I’m in a conversation and a curious question comes to mind, I push myself to ask it. What’s the worst that can happen? Be curious, I tell myself. Engage with others more often, and speaking will become more natural. Actually, I’ve had quite a few lovely conversations come from this little quest!

As for my fear of wasting time, it’s a matter of having faith in the process, Chris Lee’s next big insight.

Put Your Faith over Your Fear

This wasn’t the first time I heard this motivational saying, but Chris reinforced the message loud and clear.

We learn everything we can about how to make our dreams happen. We might enroll in classes, read books and watch videos, thinking oh yeah, I can do that! But when it comes time to execute, we find a reason to give up.

Which is what I was doing.

Those things we learned while watching training videos? Those are processes that are proven to work. They worked for several other people – why should you believe those processes won’t work for you?

“Trust the process.”

Do the work, even if you have no idea whether you will succeed or not. Something of value is likely to come out of it, whether it’s the joy of helping someone else or learning a valuable lesson. If it happens to pay off financially, well that’s nice too. But don’t focus primarily on getting a financial payoff.

Other than my passion for natural health solutions, I can’t be sure as to why exactly I feel called to add doTERRA to my business. Though, I do feel that this venture may be a safe way for me to practice and develop my speaking skills and gain more confidence. Ultimately, these skills play out into my writing business as well.

I want to do big things as a writer, and, eventually, as an author. I would love to do public speaking on the topics I write about to further spread the message that I’m here to communicate. (More on that in another post 😉)

But perhaps I don’t know need to know God’s reasoning for putting me on this path with the oils. How can I ever really know?

But I can replace my fear and resistance with faith and completely trust the process. I do believe I’m doing this for a reason, and I will trust that God has my best interest in mind.

The dreams you have are there for a reason, too. What holds you back from them? What is your root fear that keeps you from fully embracing the process of reaching your greatest desires?