'Fear is where you develop courage'

"Fear is where you develop courage"

These beautiful words were said by a huge mindset mentor of mine Dr Laurence Tham from The Wellness Couch. If you guys don’t listen to The Wellness Couch then you are living half a life….. itunes NOW!!!!

Recently I had an episode of confronting a fear. It was in the shape of a huntsman spider. Let me set the scene for you…..

Every morning I arrive at an underground office car park where I have the honour of humbly selling healthy lunches to office workers that have limited food options close by.  And lucky for me I get to see the same peeps everyday so the customers are pretty much my buds now! Whoop!

So the car park is kinda dark yeh, and as I do every morning once I unload all of the food onto my cart I grab my apron from the glove box, grab my lip balm from my bag and do a quick appearance check in the flip down visor mirror. And whop! This time about 5 inches from my face is a mother effing huntsman!!!! I lost my shit, jumped out and stared at it like a hawk so I knew it’s moves AT ALL  times. As I waited for my heart to seep back into my chest I started to contemplate life. Ok no, I didn’t. I contemplated how I was going to deal with the situation. You are probably thinking I am making a huge deal about it, but to me it was. I am out of control not in love with huntsman spiders. At ALL! Give me a snake, bug, creepy crawly of any kind (even other spiders) and I’m sorted. But can’t do these guys.

With no one around and knowing that I will not drive my car with this thing as a passenger, I start assessing my options.

1. Get close enough to my fear, try to get it out strategically myself (but that could mean that it touches me, crawls up my arm and gets all tangled in my hair!!! Not an option)   
2. Go to one of the offices upstairs that are hugely male and get one of them to help me. And by help I mean, get him to deal with it!

And then I was saved. The daily delivery man shows up……yeeeesssss!!!! Heeeee heeee!!! I tell him my situation, he comes over to try and get it out for me and totally screws up the whole operation. Yep, this dude makes everything a whole lots worse and loses the spider after trying to flick it out. So now I have a huntsman running loose in my car that is probably going to run up my leg when I am driving. Ace. 

He persists in telling me not to worry too much, that they are harmless and wont hurt me….so I punch him in the face and reassess. I mean I ‘mentally’  punched him in the face and reassessed.

I recruited another male helper upstairs and two bug spray assistants and went to war. Lucky for us he made himself visible and vulnerable and asking for trouble so we took up our warrior stance and attacked from both sides. I pretty much jumped around like a jack in the box fairy (to this day something I still get picked on!) until he keeled over and admitted defeat. Event over.

But afterwards I was angry.

Because I danced with my fear, but I didn’t conquer it.  I was disappointed with myself that I didn’t have the courage to handle the situation myself and grow my circle of bravery and confidence and consequently shrink my circle of terror. I almost want it to happen again to prove to myself that I can. Because with life comes fear. So you can either smash life in the face when you need to, or live being controlled and cornered by it.

Take home lessons…..

1.  Ask myself, what is the worst that can happen? What ever it is, remember you are the one that made up that scenario in your head. It hasn’t happened and not guaranteed to happen. If it does, then keep asking yourself if you can possibly handle the outcome.
2. Sometimes you need a team to help you to face your fear or if you are in a challenging situation. It is ok to ask for help.  Do it. Know who it is you can turn to if you need. This builds your confidence to be able to deal with more if it comes your way.
3. We often magnify the situation. This is our mind trying to talk us out of stuff! We make it seem way bigger than what it is until it seems far too impossible to handle or achieve. But is just our imaginary mind again.
4. Next time…….. I am going to smash that shit like a BOSS!!!

Sooooooo, c’mon what is your fear???

Love Mel xx