By changing the story you can conquer your greatest fears

RECENTLY I did something I thought I would never do. Even though I have a height phobia, I decided to drive to Aberfoyle and go on the UK’s longest zip wire – almost 1,400 feet long and above the treetops at 120 feet.

You may ask yourself why would I do this. Partly it was because my daughters, who love this sort of thing, wanted to do it and they couldn’t do it without an adult, but also because I was really curious about whether you could you master your own mind by observing the ‘stories’ that you tell yourself. So there would be nothing that would test that theory more than facing my greatest fear – heights.

I have to admit to feeling rather sick at watching my small looking ten-year-old flying through the air at a great rate of knots, knowing that a) I couldn’t catch her should she fall and b) that I was next. As I stood there knowing there was no way I could get out of it without letting my girls down, fear felt to me like wanting to run 100 miles in the other direction. But I knew fear’s secret, I knew that feeling could only tell me what I was thinking, and that thinking was telling me that I wasn’t safe, that I would fall, that I would let go, the rope would snap. But I knew that none of that was true. The reality was, the equipment was safe, so what was stopping me from going? Well that would be the scary, and untrue, story I was telling myself, just a bunch of scary thoughts that didn’t know anything about reality.

Then I became curious. What would happen if I didn’t follow the advice of fear but followed the thoughts that told me I would be ok? With that I pushed off and sped down over tree tops, far below, and it felt amazing. But that wasn’t the end, because at the end of the zip wire was three hours of tree top climbing. My phobia, while understood, was still there ready to party given half the chance.

As I stood at the bottom of that first tree I could have sworn that my legs had been transformed into jelly. It was almost instantaneous, I didn’t have to think about how scared I was because my body had done that for me. However, this fascinated me some more and I started to become suspicious as to what this feeling was telling me. Of course it was telling me all about my thinking and as soon as I recognised this it was as if I’d shone a light in a dark corner only to find that there was no monster lurking there at all just a pile of clothes and shoes. Because of course my thinking was scary thinking. I would be absolutely fine, all I had to do was relax and enjoy the experience. Which is what I did and by the end of the session I had conquered several zip wires, climbed many trees and even jumped into nets.

What I learnt through this experience, is that you can be the master of your own mind when you are able to recognise fear for what it is, a bunch of scary thinking that simply gets in the way; this then allows you to listen to your own intuition to guide you as to what is reality, which in turn allows you to do those things you never thought you’d be able to do.

Andrea Morrison is a Transformational Life Coach, Clinical Hypnotherapist & Speaker andreamorrison.co.uk