There’s also the trick of writing out all of the issues that one is anxious about. This study suggests that becoming fully aware of anxieties rather than just letting them simmer actually helps with performance. So even if an emotion has to keep coming up because the troubling situation is ongoing, you can create a practice so that you can remain emotionally aware without becoming emotionally overloaded.

And fear should certainly come up when people are changing habits, because the situation is all about change and novelty. Another emotion that helps with change is sadness, because it helps people let go of the thing that isn’t working and needs to be changed. It’s difficult, though, because people avoid sadness as much as they do fear. Whoops!

I am taking a course on creating new habits and I just wrote in our forum about your book Language of Emotions – especially the part about fear since that is the usual roadblock people hit when making changes in their life. Thank you for continuing to create books that help us use our emotions as allies instead of seeing them as paralyzing parasites.