It’s that time of year again when Mother Nature reminds us how beneficial it is to let things fall away. These things will serve as fertilizer for the rebirth that will come a few months down the road.

It can be scary, letting go, but if we look around us and take our lessons from the wisdom that abounds, we can see that it’s a natural part of life’s process. In this blog, I am going to look at why new seasons can bring us so much stress, anxiety, and fear—even when we know that letting go is the best thing for us—and offer a few ways to help reduce fear around times of transition. Let’s dive in.

Understanding Fear During Life’s Transitions

What goes up must come down. I’ll bet you’re not only familiar with that axiom, but you know that it’s true all the time. It’s dependable. It’s predictable. It’s a safe bet. So, it’s fair to say that dependable and predictable are both forms that safety and security can take. In other words, dependability and predictability equal safety, and that’s a fact.

Or is it?

I think most of us can agree that we are more comfortable with certainty, knowing what’s going to happen and when it will happen, and knowing what to expect. Knowing what’s coming down the pike generally makes us feel better about it.

We can use that information to plan exactly how we want to respond. Is it something favorable we want to engage with, or is it something unfavorable we want to avoid? It all comes down to safety and survival, but the plain truth is that safety and security are both illusions of the conscious mind.

Of course there are some instances where safety measures can certainly reduce the risk of accidents; but there is always an element of surprise, an element of danger, or chaos in life.

I’m writing this blog in October. During this time of year, people who enjoy being scared go to haunted houses where they can play with their proximity to uncertainty and fear. They crave that adrenaline.

But there’s one thing about haunted houses that’s not true of life: they’re not real. As long as we know that, in the end, we can walk away any time we want or need to, we can enjoy being scared. Real life, however, and its uncertain transitions, has no such deal to be struck.

Benefits of Embracing New Seasons

One of the most special things about fall is that it is followed by winter. Winter is the time of year when everything that fell during autumn lies dormant, releasing its energy to do what it needs to do next, which is to provide nutrition for the landscape. It’s fair to say that without that change, you wouldn’t have new growth in springtime. Growth and progress are both results of change.

I know it’s not fun to be in a “down” season in your life. You don’t know how long they’ll last and just plain stink. Heck, I’ve had plenty of those seasons. But you know what? I remember to keep my eyes focused straight ahead, because I know that “up” always follows “down”. Even when it hurts, I know that if I keep my eyes focused on when things will start to swing in my favor again, I can tolerate just about anything.

When you learn to take the ”down” in stride, you will find that it not only passes by more quickly but it’s also more tolerable. It serves us to embrace these metaphorical winters in preparation for that upcoming spring. This is where you build resilience and experience personal growth. I’m not asking you to like it. But you do have to embrace it, and that means accepting it just how it is.

Strategies to Reduce Fear

If there were a foolproof strategy for reducing fear, everyone would be doing it, don’t you think? Well, I’ll tell you a little secret: there are some strategies that have been available to us for ages, but only a handful of people ever choose to try them with any consistency. What I want to offer you are some ways to deal with fear, and in particular, your fear of fear.

Meditation is an oldy, but a goody. Even if you have tried it and aren’t interested in going back, you might ought to consider trying it again. The thing about meditation for people is that it is hard. It’s darn hard work to sit there and be quiet and still for twenty minutes. But what a novel idea.

Science has shown that when you meditate, you actually change your brainwaves.  When you meditate a lot, you begin to retrain your brain’s way of responding to certain stimuli, like a thought or a feeling. Meditation is the art of sitting and being, even when the world outside (and your mind) is screaming at you to do something. When you have a solid meditation practice, you become more and more capable of letting fear chatter away while you keep your cool.

I highly recommend trying to establish a meditation practice. Even if it’s only two to three minutes a day, something is better than nothing.

Mindfulness, while similar to meditation, is slightly different in that you can use mindfulness while you go through the actions of daily life. You don’t have to sit with your eyes closed. In fact, you could be doing just about anything and still be practicing mindfulness in the background.

The thought goes that when you are in the present moment, fear cannot exist there. If you are afraid, it means that you are “living in the future.” So if you can bring your mind back to the present, you will leave fear in the dust where it can hang out without impacting the present moment.

Here’s an example of what I mean: As I’m writing, whether it’s a speech or a blog post or a new book, I remind myself to feel the tactile sensation of typing on my fingertips. I listen to the crisp, satisfying click-clack of the keys. I feel my heart rate increase as the ideas start flowing from my brain onto the page. I am in the moment.

Now, it’s not easy. If it were, everyone would be a Zen master, but they’re not. Establishing a mindfulness practice takes dedication and a lot of self-forgiveness. But it is one-hundred percent doable. It’s one of those things that just makes life so much easier.

I feel confident that, with mindfulness and meditation in your arsenal, you’ll be able to approach any season with self-assuredness.

Motivation for Your Next Season

It is important to remember that no matter the season you are in, the sun will keep on shining, the birds will keep on chirping, and the world will keep on turning. Life is improved so much when you can be present for those things, and enjoy the simplicity that life has to offer. This is especially true when you are feeling anxious about your present situation.

I spoke a little bit above about looking forward to the “up” seasons, but what we have to remember is that the “down” season implies the “up” season. They are two halves of the same whole and you can’t have one without the other. One begets the other. I hope this makes sense to y’all, because this is an important piece to understand. Embracing the changing seasons of your circumstances will help you build resilience, reduce fear, and even be thankful for whatever kind of season you’re in.

Conclusion

One of the most critical aspects of this particular blog is written plainly in the title. The word seasons reminds us that nothing is permanent (except the perfection of the Georgia Bulldogs, of course). In fact, fear is probably one of the least permanent things in our lives. It flits in and out, making warning us of threats real and imagined and reminding us that we’re human, but we don’t have to—under any circumstances—believe what it’s telling us.

Transitional times can be scary, sad, exciting, or taxing (sometimes, all of the above at once). But they are necessary to move us to the next stage in life and business. And, they always, always pass.

If you are interested in exercises to help you work through fear around your life and leadership, please check out my free course, Mission Leadership. It’s packed with remedies for the fearful mind, including a unit on mindfulness.

As for learning how to work with and reframe fear, my newest book takes nine full chapters to address all that and more. I’ll share with you my insights, experience, and research on one of life’s biggest adversaries. I think you’ll find it illuminating and inspiring.

I’ll see you at the top!