Fear diminishes us. Most of us would readily agree that fear that seems to be imposed from outside of us diminishes us – that seems terribly obvious. What may be less obvious, and in fact even more damaging, is fear from within.

How many times have we stood in the face of opportunity and allowed fear of what might happen stop us from moving forward? I’m not arguing in favor of taking silly chances against all odds. What I am talking about it stepping out in faith – and if you don’t like the “f” word, then stepping out in trust. So many times it seems like the situation we are in is completely unsatisfactory and still we are afraid of making a change. Maybe that speaks to the truth of the old adage that the devil you know is better than the Angel you don’t. I think it speaks more to the nature of fear that, even when we have nothing to lose, we still hesitate to make a change.

What’s the alternative to that fear? The alternative is fullness of life. The alternative is living into our evolving identity – and that is what scares us. We may be miserable, but at least we know who we are. If we were to change our circumstances, who would we be? There is no good way to know ahead of time, so making a change means that we decide to step into a new identity. When we hold back what we fail to see is that the identity we are currently living in is a lie! Granted it is a well-known lie, but it is a lie nevertheless. We were never intended to be miserable, we were never intended to be diminished, we were never intended to be half humans who mail life in from a remote location rather than live it. In fact, you might say that the identity we hold onto is not only dead, it is a stinking, rotting corpse.

Now where is the fear?