“Fear and love: the largest show on Broadway.” ~ Anonymous

I don’t look at my fears as bad. I used to. We can all carry embarrassment, worry, or shame around our fears. Do they make us less than the next person? In fact, all of us at some point may feel we’ve cornered the market on a certain fear or a feeling of not being good enough.

How do fears show themselves in our life:

• Co-dependency (depending on a relationship to give us value)
• Avoidance
• Addictions
• Over functioning
• Under functioning
• People pleasing
• Approval seeking
• I’m not good enough “yet” so I’ll try harder
• and so on…

We are all human, and our fears are part of our humanness. They are also part of our growth. They set the stage for our emotional growth. I don’t see them as bad. They are simply part of how we grow. It’s the way growth has been designed.

The frightened part of our personalities creates distress for each one of us. Distress because they limit us in some way. It’s like contracting a muscle, and after a while you are exhausted. All you want to do is let the contraction go so you can breathe, expand, and relax.

That takes us to expansion. I see expansion as love. When I reflect on love, my thoughts go to self-love – accepting ourselves with love, with all our wants and imperfections. Most of us carry an aspect in our personality of feeling unworthy or not good enough. It’s a frightened part of our personality. We also have an all-knowing heart that carries the truth of our core value. Love is the awareness that we all have intrinsic value, each one of us. It’s our birthright. We come into this life with that beautiful truth.

That beautiful truth gets crusted up with emotional upheaval when we grow up. This is no one’s fault, it simply is. The emotional distress creates a separation between fear (our feelings of not enough) and love (our intrinsic value).

How do we voyage back to knowing and feeling the truth of our own worthiness – our own intrinsic value? We voyage back through awareness, breath, releasing work, and choice.

Choice is a huge gift that we all have been given. We can’t move into choice without awareness – awareness of what is going on in the present moment; awareness of our emotions. Through awareness we gain perspective. Perspective allows us to remember our intrinsic value.

The strength of choice. If I tease out what is involved with choice, I go to:

• Awareness
• Breath
• Commitment
• Courage
• Releasing
• Choosing

It’s through conscious choice that we experience our own personal power.

I hope this is a good year of personal expansion for you. “Fear and love: the largest show on Broadway” for each one of us. Stay awake and know that there is strength in choice.

I wish you all much personal growth in 2014.