What Is Your Deepest Fear?

David H. Lawrence XVII July 18, 2017
17 Comments

Hey, there!

I want to talk about your deepest fear today. Not because I want you to experience it, but because you are already in its grip.

You are. Whatever you’re fearful of, it has ahold of you. And I want to help you identify it, face it and kill it.

Are you with me?

The brave front you might put up goes like this: “I don’t have any fears at all.”

OK.

You can stop reading this and move on to something else. But I think there’s probably more behind that facade of bravado.

Most people have fears. Most of them suffer at the hands of those fears:

“Rejection.”

“Failure.”

“Bullying.”

“Being fired.”

“Exposure as a fraud.”

Those are pretty big fears.

But sometimes, we don’t even know how to put into words what those fears are, and I submit that your deepest fear is one you’ve probably never considered.

One that when I think about it, I can identify almost immediately as the deepest fear I’ve ever faced – and conquered.

And as I look around, there are lots of actors and VO talent that I can see have this same fear.

Marianne Williamson even spoke to it (though this is often mis-attributed to Nelson Mandela). She wrote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are weak. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

So. There it is. Not the fear of failure, rejection, being outed as a fraud. No, rather, the fear of the tremendous possibility that you are everything you want to be – and everything you need is at your fingertips to make your life spectacular.

What if you got to your goals?

What if you were able to be the success you yearn to be?

What if you were in that studio all the time, working on one production after another, eventually having to hire someone so that you don’t lose track of the paychecks?

How different would your life be then?

And here’s the big one: what rules of living your life that you currently struggle to rely on, would you have to leave behind, to live your life in that new and spectacular way?

That was a huge question for me. And one that I’d like to help you discover the answer to: the rules that feed that fear have to be changed. New rules, rules that allow you to enjoy your life, not struggle with it, have to be created and followed. Rules that allow you to manage success, not manage failure. That allow you to manage satisfaction, not, constant disappointment. That allow you to manage acceptance and popularity, not rejection. And that allow you to manage and extend personal authenticity, not a feeling of fraudulence.

Exciting? It was for me.

So how do we do that? I describe how to fix this situation in the next 60 Seconds, and you can find that article here.

Thoughts? Let me know in the comments below.

Hope this helps!

David

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  5. Guy Whitlock July 18, 2017

    I actually thought that this was going to wander into some philosophical fluff. Wrong. You hit the nail on the head, and I didn’t even realize there was a nail to be hit! Looking forward to your next installment.

  6. Shelley Stephen July 18, 2017

    Yep, that’s me – fear of success. What if the coaches are right and I AM good at this? What if clients hire me and like it? What if I start making a lot of money at it? How does that affect me? How does that affect my husband and my marriage? How does that affect my living situation?

    Lots of questions with no answers except for the fear.

  14. Mark May 22, 2018

    You’ll never know how your timing is so perfect! Truer words haven’t been shared. Thank you David. Looking forward to the “how to put fear” in its place.