Maybe you’re scared.

Maybe being scared has you stuck.

Maybe there’s this thing you want to do, but you’re scared to do it because it’s waaaaaay outside your comfort zone.

Maybe you know the thing imprisoning you in your comfort zone – far, far, far away from your grand, audacious goal – is fear.

No maybe about it: this being-scared-thing sucks.

So, you think, if I conquered fear, I’d be able to venture outside my comfort zone and finally, finally, FINALLY accomplish my goals.

Which means, it seems, that the first thing you need to do to accomplish your goals is battle fear. Vanquish it. Live fear-free so you can live the life of your dreams.

So you look around…and yep, that’s what the whole damn world is telling you.

Self-help gurus and now-commercially successful artists counsel us to do what we love and the money will follow, jump and the net will appear, quit your job and let the chips fall where they may, face the fear and do it anyway…

…and it seems like a lot of them have done just that: they’ve propped their TVs up on cardboard boxes or lived in unheated squats in Berlin or had the roof cave in and couch-surfed.

And so, as part of that narrative, we absorb the message that these people – people we respect – were either fearless or scared but got over it.

Which makes us think that facing down fear, battling it, conquering it, exiling it, is the first step towards our dreams.

And so we valiantly suit up and go to war.

With ourselves. Because fear is an inevitable, immutable part of you.

We fight and we fight and we fight. And then we get tired, survey the battlefield and notice that Fear is fine. It is not waving the white flag. In fact it looks like it has called in reinforcements.

Which is really terrifying.

Now you’re scared that you’re never not going to be scared and if you’re never not scared, you’re never going to realize your dreams. Because, in the oft-repeated formula for success, first you have to vanquish your fears.

But you can’t. So you surrender.

And you think you’ve failed. You think you’re stuck and it’s all because no matter what you do, fear is still with you.

But that’s the truth: you will never be free of fear.

And that doesn’t mean you’ve got an excuse to put away your dreams.

Conquering fear is not the first step towards accomplishing your goals.

Accepting your fears and accommodating them is the first step.

And that means you’ve got to stop flagellating yourself for being a fear-ridden creature because disparaging yourself and luxuriating in your fears will solidify your already resilient excuses against action.

So stopping that is essential to moving forward; vanquishing fear is not.

And that’s what in concert with fear ^[1] is all about.

• It’s about admitting the simple truth that you will always be afraid. Fear is a biological gift threaded through all the strands of our DNA. Fear is divinely human. And so, if you’re human, it will always be with you. Fear is part of you.

• It’s about learning to accommodate fear, because fear is inevitable and part of your human reality – your reality – and getting comfortable with your unique and changing fears.

• It’s about moving past “getting comfortable with fear” to actively embracing fear as an ally (because it’s with you, always).

• It’s about not fighting fear – because fear is part of you – and instead using fear to create.

• It’s about accommodating your fears – accomodating your reality, accomodating yourself – and starting from the centre of your comfort zone…

…rather than spending a lot of useless energy and resources battling fear, because that’s a war you won’t win.

So don’t fight. Don’t fight yourself. Don’t fight fear. Use fear.

Use your every constraint as creative manna.

Use this book. My book.

(It’s called in concert with fear: how to get past scared and stuck ^[1] and it’s a forty page treatise on transforming fear from an agent of stuck to an endlessly renewable creative resource.)

Use the five fear-full, fear-loving exercises in my book to

• marvel at your own resilience (look what you’ve survived! Look what you can do even when you’re scared!).
• get comfortable with fear.
• use fear to create.
• create.

and

• create an audience.

That’s what I did.

When I made space for my fear, was gentle with myself, stopped beating myself up for being scared (otherwise known as the state of being human), and met myself where I was, I started creating. I created in the midst of my fear and from my comfort zone. And the more I created, and the less friction I had with fear, the more my comfort zone expanded. Now, almost four years later I have a successful blog, business, a beloved, a brand-new baby, and the ability to say this – all the best parts of me are big: brain, breasts, booty - and mean it.

Thank you, fear.

So look what fear can do, when you’re realistic about it, when you admit it, accommodate it, work with it, act with it.

Act in concert with fear. Live, love and create in concert with fear.

Because fear can be an ever-renewing, non-exhaustible, creative resource and your very best friend.

Use it.

Use fear.

Use fear to create.

Use fear to create everything you’ve ever wanted.

All you have to do is act in concert with fear.

———————–

in concert with fear: how to get past scared and stuck ^[1] is a 42 page meditation-slash-treatise on making  peace with fear so it won’t wage war on your creative life (and you!). It contains five simple, skill-building exercises that will empower you to transform your  fear into a tangible creation. All for $15. And that’s not scary at all. ^[2]