overcome | Liz Cirelli

Daydream Believers Podcast hosted by Liz Cirelli

How to overcome fear & challenges with D Grant Smith

This month inside the Daydream Believers community the wise and wonderful D Grant Smith took the time out of his busy schedule to sit down with me and chat about how to overcome fears and challenges.

It was an amazing exchange, during which we addressed the questions submitted by members of the community.

We hope you find it helpful, and if you’d like to connect more with D, you can find him here. Get in touch with him – he’s a beautiful and big-hearted soul who is waiting to help you step into your greatness.

These podcasts exist to provide you with the knowledge, inspiration and motivation needed to pursue your dreams.

If you’d like to join the Daydream Believers online coaching community, have your say on what topics get covered during our podcasts – and have your questions answered by our expert guests, simply become a patron here. You can sign up quickly and easily and you’ll also get access to the full range of my coaching packages. Plus you’ll get exclusive early access to all my musical output – and lots of lovely treats in between!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Really looking forward to welcoming you to the family!

Overcoming fear – part 1

09/07/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog, Podcast

community, creative, daydream believers, fear, follow your dreams, help, inspire, Liz Cirelli, mentorship, overcome, podcast

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Last week I touched on where I consider fear to come from in spiritual terms: from my perspective, it is a method employed by the darker forces at play on this planet to keep us from expressing our creative gifts. Why? Because our creative expression is also the gateway to our empowerment – and I’m talking experientially when I say that!

I’ve had to overcome quite the collection of fears in order to start achieving my dream of working in music full time. There was the fear of financial lack, fear of failure, fear of judgement, fear of not being good enough, it was all fear fear fear!

I tried all sorts of tactics to overcome fear – feeling it as excitement made sense to me, but it didn’t work – all I felt was still fear. Paralysing fear. Another way to overcome fear is to do it anyway – and this appealed to me, but the fear I felt was so paralysing I literally couldn’t move beyond it.

What finally freed me from the clutches of fear was entertaining the thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something greater than me trying to manipulate my thoughts and keep me paralysed in fear, because by doing so it had my energy – and without it, it could not survive.

This belief made me become more resolute than ever to follow my dreams and I finally found the courage to put everything I had into music. And I mean everything: money, time, energy, patience, resilience, determination, dedication – all of it got thrown at music.

Once I had plucked up enough courage to do the very thing I was so fearful of doing, the fear melted away – not just in regards to my creativity, but throughout my entire life.

Of course I still feel fear because I’m a human being, but now I have the will to plough right on through it.

We must remember that the thing we are most afraid of doing – especially regarding our creativity – is often where our magic lies – or where our life’s purpose resides, so it’s really important we act in spite of our fears. And when we do, we realise there is actually nothing really there to be afraid of. It’s just an illusion of shadows.

Perhaps regarding fear as an outside force trying to manipulate your thoughts seems zany. It might be. But what I’m interested in is getting to the very bottom of the root of what causes that thought, that then triggers that emotion. And I’m talking deeper than a set of circumstances that happened to you as a child, or the result of social programming.

I found it fascinating that, simply by convincing myself that the fear was not mine so to speak, it somehow gave me the courage to overcome the fear. This therefore suggests to me that we can overcome fears simply by choosing to entertain another way of thinking – and believing in that. So my suggestion to you is to investigate new beliefs that will change your way of thinking and eventually liberate you from the bondage of fear.

If this way of thinking doesn’t resonate with you, but you struggle to overcome your fears by just doing it anyway, there is another nifty little trick you can use to overcome fear – and that’s to actually flip it on its head and use fear as motivational fuel.

Let’s say you’re a procrastinator and always find other things to do than working on your dream. So try this: set yourself a daily or weekly goal and tell a few friends about it – then tell them you’ll pay them each £100 if you don’t get it done. Give that a go and see what happens! I’ve got a few more little tricks up my sleeve to help you overcome fear – I’ll be back with more in the next coming weeks!

These posts exist to provide you with the knowledge, inspiration and motivation needed to pursue your dreams. If you’d like to have your say on what topics get covered AND have your questions answered by me and/or our expert guests, simply join our community on Patreon. We really look forward to welcoming you to the family!

Me and my creativity

11/06/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog

blog, creativity, dreams, fear, Liz Cirelli, music, overcome, struggles

Music. Even when I see that word, or hear it – or speak it, it sends shivers up my spine. Music is my air, my water – my sunshine. It always has been. And yet it’s taken me decades to pluck up the courage to pursue my life-long dream of doing music full time.

I’ve wrestled – repeatedly struggling with fear. The usual suspects: fear of financial lack, fear of judgement and of course our good old buddy, fear of failure. These fears were all compounded by doubt – a lack of confidence in myself, a doubt as to whether or not I was ‘good enough’ or ‘capable’.

My passion for music is unquestionable, but for a very long time ego-based desires shrouded that passion in a craving for fame and fortune, making my motives selfish and ego-driven.

This suited me just fine whilst I was living the life of a relatively unconscious human being. I was selfish – and was for the most part, quite happy to manipulate people so I got what I wanted. And I was good at it. But, what goes around comes around – and life eventually served me a well-deserved slice of humble pie.

I started taking my previously neglected spiritual life a little more seriously and began seeking the truth. In doing so I added a considerable amount of discord into my desire to pursue a career in music.

My quest for truth inevitably lead to me unravelling my own story – and as I began the search for who I really was, I began to face some hard truths about myself.

I started to feel that pursuing a career in music was selfish – that I should be doing something more worthy. Something that would help others, rather than satisfy my own selfish wants. Of course I felt this – I had developed enough awareness by now to make the painful realisation that my desires to pursue a career in music had been selfish. Yes my passion for music was real and pure, but my motives had been totally driven by my ego.

For a while I put music on the back-burner. I pursued a life as a yoga teacher and massage therapist because I thought they were good, wholesome things to do. I promised myself I’d do the music in my spare time, but the reality was it got neglected. I loved teaching yoga and giving massages, but there was sadness in my heart.

I couldn’t put my finger on what was causing this sadness though. I didn’t make the connection back then that it was because I was neglecting my passion. Then in September 2015, my heart spoke to me so loudly I realised in an instant what was causing it to be sad. It was like lightening running through me. I HAD to do music.

I realised that music has always been my life-long love. I also realised that my biggest fear was the fear of dying not having achieved my life’s purpose. In that moment, all fear and doubt paled into insignificance, and I made a promise to myself to give music everything I had.

Since then I’ve been focussing on music and only music. I’m working super hard at it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard in my life! I’ve achieved a lot in the last 18 months, but I’ve lost count of the times I felt like giving up over that period.

For the first year money came in in fits and spurts, so of course my fear of financial lack was doing its best to make me do an about-turn. No. I had done enough work on myself by now to not allow my fears to rule me, so onwards I strode.

There is no doubt about this: I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing now had it not been for the amazing support network I have around me. Family, friends – they have all been – and will continue to be – the wind beneath my wings throughout this journey. And faith. Faith has been my cornerstone. Without it I probably would have given up.

In fact, in a serendipitous turn of events, providence sent me Gary Gray – my incredible music production mentor. Having him to guide and support me – and to hold me accountable has been like wind to wild fire. Gary, I know you’ll be reading this – so thank you so much!

Sure, I still have moments when the doubt tries to make a return. I still have moments when I can feel the fear trying to figure out a way to creep back in. Yes, the wrestle is there – but when we wrestle there has to eventually be a winner.

Getting to know how the forces of doubt and fear operate within my mind – and learning how to circumnavigate them has been so freeing for me. It’s what finally gave me the clarity and courage to listen to my heart.

Being honest with myself about my ego-based desires was equally freeing. By acknowledging them, I was then able to chose to let them go. Letting go of them then allowed my pure passion for music to shine through, which then enabled me to follow my dream of doing music full time, knowing there was nothing selfish in it. It is simply what I was born to do.

Our darker tendencies do not disappear but rather, through the careful cultivation of awareness, we slowly come to realise that we are able to make a choice. We can chose to not be ruled by ego: fear, doubt, frustration, despair, selfishness – or rage. We can choose to follow our true passions – our dreams – what we were born to do.

Having the faith that the right doors would open for me when the time was right gave me the strength to keep going when I felt like giving up. When you are pursuing something from a place of pure passion without any of the darkness of ego-based desires attached, magic does happen! The power of your focus makes it so.

Add into that equation commitment, determination, humility, resilience and perseverance and you become practically unstoppable. The only difference after all, between those who make it and those who don’t is this: those who make it never give up.

I hope this inspires you to go out there and follow the call of your dreams.

Thank you so much for coming here and taking the time out to have a read. If you’d like to get early access to all my blog posts, musical output – and get access to my coaching community, please join my Patreon page by clicking here. It’s where all the action is happening! You can sign up quickly and easily and as a patron, you’ll receive some really lovely rewards. Big love, Liz.