3 Tips to Find the Courage to Change

For most of my life, I ran away from opportunities because I lived in fear.   I had no courage to change. When I was a child, I wanted to be an actress. I remember one of my earliest performance experiences. I was playing a young Chinese little sister who had to bring out a Chinese dust broom to the girl playing my mother.   When my teacher cued me out on stage, I handed the broom to ‘my mother’, and we dropped it. We picked it up again, and in my nervousness, we dropped it again.   By then the audience was laughing, and I couldn’t get off that stage fast enough!

I remember in High school, my school put on really fun musicals that I would have loved to be a part of. By then I was playing the French horn, and I felt safer in the theater orchestra with people I knew. I was afraid to be associated with the acting crowd, and resisted, even though acting and dancing seemed like so much fun!

In college, there were opportunities to live abroad.   I would have loved to travel, and explore other cultures, but I passed those up, because my experience living in Hong Kong as a child was so traumatic for me.

I’ve missed out on so much that would have made my life more fun and more meaningful.   But thank goodness, I now have tools to release my fears!  

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5 Subconscious Barriers to Emotional Intimacy

For most of my life, I’ve feared emotional intimacy.   As I’ve grown aware that I’ve been unconsciously pushing people away, I’ve been on a mission to find and develop deeper and more meaningful relationships.   In my search, I found these 5 barriers that often hinder emotional intimacy. If you struggle with having or keeping meaningful relationships, where it feels safe to be authentic and vulnerable, see if any of these apply to you:

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