Welcome to Release to Embrace,
An opportunity to respond to the complex everyday experiences that lift us up and bring us down.
My name is Jess and I have struggled with daily attention to meditation and I hope this little offering brings you closer to your purpose.
Today's meditation is on the fear of failure.
Let's begin just by breathing together.
Let's anchor ourselves in this simple breathing exercise.
As you breathe in,
Think or whisper to yourself,
My heart seeks and breathes out and finds peace.
My heart seeks and finds peace.
Let's try that for a moment.
If your mind wanders during our time,
Just come back to that simple breathing exercise.
My heart seeks and finds peace.
Take a moment and just feel yourself breathe.
Take one big breath in and out.
Just be your own company for 60 seconds and as you breathe,
Try to make sure the out-breath is a little longer than the in-breath.
Maybe count in to three,
Out for four,
Or in for four,
Out for five.
Now as you go into today,
Take a moment and identify one person or situation that you are grateful for as you do this.
So often,
Fear of failure holds us back,
Keeping us stuck in self-doubt and preventing us from stepping into our fullest potential.
In this meditation,
We will gently explore that fear,
Offering it compassion,
Space to soften.
As we breathe and release,
We invite the truth that failure is not an end,
But a path to growth,
Learning,
And resilience.
Our bodies are an important part of meditation.
So if you're able,
Put out your arms and extend your palms up in a posture of release.
You even set your hands on your lap and imagine you wrote on your left hand what you are fearing to fail at.
With hands up in a posture of release,
Imagine you wrote on your left hand what are you fearing that you are failing at.
Now imagine you wrote on your right hand how you're feeling about all those things that you wrote on your left hand.
Take a moment and just reflect how you're feeling about those things.
These things on your hands,
They do not define you,
But they are part of you.
They serve as ground to your next growth and your next win.
A lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release,
But let's also focus on what healthy things we put into the space of that release.
For releasing the cares of fearing failure,
What are we needing to take on?
As you close your hands,
What accompanying things do you need as you deal with the fear of failure in your life?
If you identified what to put in the place of fear,
How about presence,
Assurance,
Positive risk?
Fear of failure keeps us from our purpose because it focuses us on a future that may not happen,
Rather than the present that is our power.
So in meditation,
We slow down and have the opportunity to make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend a moment connecting with your own story about how fear of failure is impacting your life and the freedom that you want to live into.
We accept that freedom is within our grasp,
But it takes both the release of the fear of failure and the acceptance of other healthy messages.
Given our stories,
Our struggles,
This may take significant meditation and intentionality.
The truth is that taking this time today didn't change your situations that are causing you fear,
But hopefully it has changed your orientation toward them.
You may need to take some greater steps to address fear of failure,
But meditation's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes our situations,
But that it often changes us.
May you live in freedom.
