Stop being intimidated

One of the biggest problems I see people having to deal with when I’m coaching is that they’ve become INTIMIDATED by life.

This can show up in all kinds of different ways but the impact of having this problem is always the same: it stops them from taking the kind of ACTION they really want to be taking and from getting all of the amazing benefits that only action can bring.

In my own life, I struggled with this problem when I was younger and I’d been conditioned to stop believing in myself by various unhealthy influences in my life.

It was only when I really reached BREAKING POINT in my late teens and realised that the ideas in my head were stopping me from getting the RESULTS that I wanted from life that I was able to have a breakthrough moment of thinking “F it” and just decided to do whatever the hell I wanted (and disappeared to Japan).

That might sound a little reckless but – in retrospect – when you’ve been locked in your own MIND for however many years and then projected the mental cage outwards into the world around you then having a “F it” moment can be the only way out.

In fact, when things get serious enough and you resist reality for long enough – by NOT ACCEPTING YOURSELF – then eventually you’ll reach that crossroads where the only two options are to either keep resisting in a futile attempt to try and stay the same or to step up and say “F it” and then do something that might actually change your life and set you free.

These days I’m not intimidated by life at all and it’s because I put myself on a path of going out there and actually FIGURING OUT FOR MYSELF who I am and what I’m capable of (and not judging my own self-worth based on the results that I got) instead of letting the world TELL ME who I am and believing it without any real thought.

I could probably have never put myself on that path – or would’ve at least taken a lot longer to get there – if I didn’t reach that point of just saying “F it” and going out there and getting over my fear of truly LIVING.

If you find yourself being intimidated by life then the way out is REALITY but before you find it you might have to find yourself saying “F it” so that you can step outside of your programming and just going out and taking ACTION (the only real ‘cure’ for anything – especially the cure for a life lived from behind a mental cage).

This article will help you understand what that means and what you can do to start feeling truly ALIVE again.

Here we go:

Symptoms of Being Intimidated by Life

When we become intimidated by life we either STOP taking action completely or we only take the actions that are within our comfort zone and so won’t STRETCH us or show us the EDGE of our ideas about ourselves.

When this happens, we just end up living an inauthentic or UNREAL life where we ultimately play the role of a pawn in somebody else’s chess game (some boss we don’t even care about, some domineering partner or family member, or simply our ideas about ‘society’ as a whole).

The most common place we end up when we’re intimidated like this is the WAGE CAGE (i.e. some ‘job’ that you found yourself in because you forgot you could actually CHOOSE your own life if you stepped up and focused on the real stuff).

In short, we end up in this UNREAL STATE because by giving into intimidation we end up giving up our ACTIVE POWER and then listlessly floating along through life without any direction.

The way back to reality is to recognise the symptoms of living in this unreal manner, saying “F it”, and then getting back on track to finding our REAL LIVES again.

If you’ve become intimidated then you’ll probably suffer from some or all of the following symptoms:

Passive Mindset

When you become intimidated by life you’ll develop an UNREAL MINDSET that stops you from taking action.

This might show up in a variety of ways but the most common are things like negative thinking (which is almost always a way of trying to justify not taking action), ‘excusitis’ which is just a fancy way of saying that you’ll constantly come up with EXCUSES not to do what needs to be done, and self-limiting beliefs that tell you there’s something fundamentally ‘wrong’ with you or the world so there’s no point even trying.

All of these ways of SEEING and interpreting ourselves, the world, and reality just cause us to try and avoid acting in the world as a way of staying in our comfort zone (where we often don’t even want to be anyway because we’re miserable there as a result of resisting REALITY).

All of this is really caused by being INTIMIDATED by the perceived consequences of taking action and the emotions we’ll have to face by doing so (regardless of if we ‘fail’ or ‘succeed’).

Restlessness

As a result of not taking ACTION, you will probably become restless and irritable. This is simply because you know that there’s more to life but your intimidation has stopped you from going out and getting it.

When you don’t ACT, then you don’t let your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and/or trauma) heal itself in the way that it needs to and instead you ‘block’ the healing process behind the static beliefs that are stopping you from acting in the first place.

This causes inner friction and frustration that is experienced as RESTLESSNESS.  This is really just the DESIRE of your real self – which you’ve become detached from – screaming to be expressed in the world (and the only way you can do that is by becoming AWARE of the real ‘stuff’, ACCEPTING what’s true, and then ACTING on it).

Never Speaking Up

Intimidated people are scared of the TRUTH and for that reason they refuse to speak up and share the truth as they see it.  A big part of this is because they literally fear the truth itself because it would show the futility of their PASSIVE way of thinking and being in the world.

On a perhaps simpler level, people who are INTIMIDATED by life are almost always shame-driven individuals who have a feeling that they’re not good enough following them around like a ghost (which it is…a ghost of the past) and so they don’t want to risk ‘rocking the boat’ with their opinions or ideas in case somebody disagrees with them (which to the shame-driven individual is something that triggers all kinds of unsavoury emotions).

For this reason, when people have become intimidated by life they rarely – perhaps even never – share with others what they really think, feel, or want to do for fear of being rejected (not realising that by not sharing they’ve already REJECTED THEMSELVES).

Negative Thinking

We spoke about this above as a symptom of having a PASSIVE MINDSET (which all intimidated people eventually develop). Just to clarify a little more, negative thinking is ultimately just a form of UNREAL PESSIMISM that come from somebody trying to DEFLECT life at all costs by trying to explain it away.

That might sound a bit technical but all it means is this:

When people are intimidated it’s almost always because they have unresolved SHAME that causes them to feel like they’re not good enough in some way.

In order to try and hide from this shameful feeling (which is never real, always something they’ve picked up from outside of themselves and then taken onboard as a judgement that they continue to hypnotise themselves with), the intimidated person will concoct a POINT OF VIEW of life that justifies the story they’re telling themselves so that they can try to HIDE from their shame instead of dissolving it (by taking action).

This UNREAL POV is always negative because negativity always explains away action.

In practical terms, it just means that the intimidated person will always look on the (unreal) dark side of things in order to find reasons not to do the things that will actually free them (and you can always find a million reasons not to do things if you set your mind on doing that).

Procrastination

Another thing that intimidated people will do to avoid taking action is to procrastinate.

In simple terms, all that means is that they will focus on taking actions that feel like they’re doing something but that are actually a distraction from the REAL stuff they could be doing that will make a  big difference to their lives.

For example, I know a few coaches that would benefit from organising and having SALES CALLS but because they’re worried that they’ll be rejected or even that they’ll be successful and actually have to coach somebody they instead procrastinate by playing around on social media all day or doing other unimportant things that are their ‘hobbies’ but won’t really get them anywhere.

These tasks allow them to tell themselves the story that they’re ‘busy’ and doing things whilst also (conveniently) avoiding the things that would get them where they want to be (with the cost of having to push through their comfort zones and face themselves and other people).

Not Taking the Actions You Really Want To Take

In short, then, when you’re an INTIMIDATED person, you might be ‘busy’ in the sense that you’re constantly doing things but you probably won’t be doing the things you really want to do because you’re AFRAID of having to face yourself at some level.

Some people can spend their whole lives wasting time on distractions and busyness for this reason. If you realise you have this problem as you’re reading this then the question becomes: “What are you going to DO about it?”

Maybe it’s time to say “F it” and do some of that stuff you’ve been putting off that could change your life?

Being Outcome-Dependent Instead of Outcome-Independent

I’ve already spoken about Outcome-Independence a lot on this site (because it’s so important). If you haven’t read the main article and you’re unfamiliar with the term, then all it means is that you can live in one of two ways:

-1: Outcome-dependence (Unreal): Where your levels of self-acceptance are CONDITIONAL and affected by the outcomes you get as you go through life.

-2: Outcome-independence (Real): Where you “do your best and forget the rest” but your levels of self-acceptance are UNCONDITIONAL and not affected by the outcomes you get.

In other words, with outcome-dependence you NO LONGER feel ‘good’ about yourself if you fail to get the results you want whereas if you’re outcome-independent then you still feel good even if you ‘fail’ as you know you can pick yourself up again, learn what needs to be learned, and either try again or ACCEPT some reality that can’t be changed.

When we’re INTIMIDATED by life, we end up putting our goals on a pedestal – because we think they’ll fill the void inside ourselves (that can only be filled by ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY) – and so we inflate their importance to the extent that we become INTIMIDATED BY THE THINGS WE WANT.

Again, this comes back to our relationships with ourselves because if we become a shame-dissolving person instead of a shame-driven one it becomes a lot easier to say “F it” and go out and chase our goals in an outcome-independent way.

Imposter Syndrome

If an intimidated person actually does manage to overcome themselves and take ACTION without working on their emotional ‘stuff’ then they find themselves in a position where they feel like a fraud (Imposter Syndrome).

This is ultimately because there ends up being a gap between the way that they show themselves to the world and the SHAME that they still feel as they used action as a vessel to try and run from it instead of dissolving it.

When this happens, the intimidated person ends up being worried about being ‘found out’ (i.e. having the world reveal itself to agree with the skewed distortions of their shame).

This just adds a whole new layer of intimidation that they have to deal with because they have to find new ways to keep ‘hiding’ themselves so that they won’t be exposed as a shame-driven individual.

In reality, they could just say “F it” and keep doing what’s worked for them to get them where they are but they’re so afraid of being “found out” that they take everything too seriously to see clearly.

General Lack of Confidence

Perhaps it goes without saying, but when people become intimidated by life, they lack confidence.

This is usually for two reasons that build on each other:

-1: They keep telling themselves a story about why they can’t/shouldn’t/best not take the ACTION that they want to take (and because practise makes perfect this causes them to miss out on their own potential).

-2: Because they don’t take this action, they end up not getting results (which just reinforces the unreal story they’re telling themselves).

Once you’ve stopped taking action and you end up believing that the consequences of not taking action are WHO YOU ARE then you end up in a self-perpetuating loop that causes your confidence to dwindle.

The longer you stay in this loop the worse things can get. It’s so bad that some people spend their whole lives on this hamster wheel, going around in circles and ruining their own lives.

A shortcut to getting out of it is to realise how bad things have become, have an “F it” moment, and go out there and start ACTING again (which as you build momentum and get results will increase your confidence).

Anxiety and/or Depression

If you don’t solve the problem of intimidation then you increase your odds of becoming anxious and/or depressed. This doesn’t mean that all anxiety and depression are caused by being intimidated but it does mean that a lot of it is.

The short version is this:

Anxiety will enter your life when you create a FALSE IMAGE of yourself in an attempt to hide from your intimidation instead of pushing through it and see what’s actually REAL.

This false image just causes problems because you’ll use it as a FILTER to try and avoid reality and avoiding reality will constantly add friction to your life (which is experienced as ‘anxiety’).

Depression enters your life when you’re so intimidated that you stop MOVING. This is a consequence of developing the passive mindset mentioned above – when you start to see and think in this way then you just end up taking yourself out of action, away from any sense of purpose, and experiencing live at the level of existence alone (instead of thriving in life).

In both cases, you need to learn to say “F it” so you can start moving in a more REAL way again.

How You Became Intimidated

If you recognise the above symptoms in yourself then there’s a good chance you’ve become intimidated by life (that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re living in constant fear but it means the limits of your fear are ripe for exploration).

This means that at some level you need to say “F it” and to start taking the right kind of action again so that you can get RESULTS from life that are REAL to you.

It might be helpful to know how you ended up being intimidated in the first place (if you look at kids, for example, they have to be TAUGHT to be intimidated by life – that means in your own case it’s something that you had to learn. The good news is that if you LEARNED it then you can also UNLEARN it).

Here are some of the most common reasons for becoming intimidated by life:

Basically, you got sent into your HEAD somehow.

The short-version of what happened is that you got sent into your HEAD for whatever reason and decided to identify with it and stay there.

Normally, this is because in our early years we are made to feel ASHAMED or GUILTY in some way (or in the most extreme cases, TRAUMATISED) and it causes us to think ourselves into a fragmented version of ourselves that disowns certain emotions and desires.

For example, maybe you had a high school teacher who insulted your artwork and so you created a ‘version’ of yourself that has no interest in artistic pursuits.  The original interest is still down there – in the Shadow Territory – but you create a mental image of yourself that denies it.

This is just a hypothetical example but the point is that something happens that sends you into your head and your INTIMIDATION is just your ego’s way of keeping you there.

You might’ve listened to OTHER PEOPLE instead of yourself.

The only person who can live your life for you is…YOU.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where people will attempt to give us all kinds of unwarranted and unreal advice about how we ‘should’ live our lives.

More often than not, this advice is usually just passed on from one INTIMIDATED person to another and so it just ends up doing more harm than good.

If you listen to this advice then you’ll end up being intimidated and not listening to your own REAL VOICE which knows there’s nothing to be intimidated by.

You compared yourself to others (usually the highlight reel).

We can become intimidated – especially in the age of (anti)social media – when we look at the lives other people are portraying themselves to be living and compare ourselves and our lives to what we see.

The problem – as the old saying goes – is that when we do this we’re comparing our behind-the-scenes footage to their highlight reels. This can end up making us feel that we’re not “good enough” (that shame again) and this stops us from taking action (which, ironically, would get us where we want to be).

The solution is to realise that you can’t be compared to other people because you’re living your own life and you’ve had your own experiences which have made you the UNIQUE person that you are right now.

Comparing yourself to others is just a way of NOT ACCEPTING YOURSELF (because of the unresolved emotional ‘stuff’) and this prevents you from accepting who you are and then expressing it with your ACTIONS.

You lost your balls somehow (but you can get them back)

The super short version? Something has happened to you that’s caused you to lose your BALLS and to overthink every little detail of your life instead of ACTING on it.

You can get your balls back but you need to unlearn all of the BS that’s stopping you from recognising the truth about life: that the only person with any POWER over your life is YOU.

You let your ‘protective’ emotions like anger be turned against you (often into depression or sentimentality).

Sometimes, emotions that help us protect ourselves and to define healthy boundaries in our lives are ‘shamed’ or belittled by ‘guilt’ (in an attempt to control us) and so we develop an unhealthy relationship with them. The most common emotion that this happens with is ANGER.

When we disown our anger then it doesn’t ‘go’ anywhere – it just becomes something that we stop expressing. Because we have a mental ‘block’ that stops us expressing it externally, our anger simply TURNS AGAINST US and will be experienced as a hypercritical inner voice that constantly judges us, etc. eventually leading to a lack of action and then DEPRESSION.

Alternatively, we may also end up being overly sentimental about things because we end up experiencing everything through the FILTER of depression that a detachment from our healthy emotions can cause (and because a lack of anger can stop us from moving forward with our PURPOSE).

When we end up in this situation, we end up being intimidated by life because we think that we lack the strength to handle it (when, actually, we’re just hiding this strength from ourselves).

You let your interpretation of the past skew your vision of yourself in the present.

In short, if you’re intimidated by life in the present then you have a DISTORTED interpretation of the past and who you have become because of it.

What this might look like is different for everybody but it will usually involve you writing some kind of STORY for yourself to try and live out that DISOWNS vital parts of yourself because of shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

If you want to be REAL again and to stop being intimidated by life then you need to start writing a REAL STORY (or more accurately unlearning the BS story that stopped you expressing the real story in the first place).

This will probably mean FORGIVING YOURSELF at some level so that you can let go of the beliefs you picked up that caused you to be intimidated in the first place.

A short cut to doing this? You guessed it: you have to learn to say “F it”.

How To Stop Being Intimidated.

So how do we bring this all together and get life moving again? It’s simple in theory but not always in practice (which is the core problem).

The short answer is that you need to start talking ACTION.

The main SYMPTOM of the PROBLEM of being intimidated is that you stop taking REAL ACTION and then your life ends up being some unreal thing that you don’t want it to be.

You could spend the rest of your life trying to figure out exactly why you became intimidated in the first place (and maybe after reading the above list you have some basic idea) but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter THAT MUCH.

If you want to REVERSE the symptoms of being intimidated then you need to start taking some kind of ACTION in your life.

More than that, you need to start taking REAL action so that you’re not just distracting yourself from the REAL version of yourself and making the problem worse (by being busy for the sake of being busy and procrastinating, etc.).

What this means in the context of your own life might be different to what it means in anybody else’s life but probably there is some ‘thing’ that you’ve wanted to be doing for a while but keep finding BS reasons (really EXCUSES) to put off doing.

If you can think of something like that then you’ve just given yourself as starting point.

All you really need to do now is to say “F it” and START doing it.

It’s either that or keep being intimidated and living an unreal life for the rest of your days.

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

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