Mistaking Fear for Alignment
why we need to start pausing in life
Hello again, and welcome to Part 2 of our fear series.
Before we get started, a quick note to celebrate the one-year mark of our newsletter! I am so grateful for each and every one of you. My continued wish is that you are receiving value in our time together. I’m sending so much love to each of you today.
Last week, we talked about how fear can keep us stuck in patterns, in relationships, or in mindsets that don’t serve us. But here’s the idea for today: fear doesn’t always look like paralysis. Sometimes, fear looks like productivity. We have good intentions with this productivity, but it doesn’t serve the bigger picture.
As I took a few weeks to reflect on my own patterns of fear, I felt inspired to shift the topic to fear and surrender.
Take a moment to reflect on your daily life and see if these feelings resonate with you:
It looks like being “on top of it,” like checking the boxes, like being the responsible one. It feels like you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing… but deep down, there’s a tension. A grasping. A quiet panic underneath all that movement.
Busy or Controlling?
Gripping too tightly doesn’t create stability, it creates resistance.
We live in a culture that celebrates motion. To be honest, I align deeply with that. I have what feels like an unnatural amount of energy, so motion is good for me. However, motion ≠ meaning, at least not always.
Business isn’t the same as growth.
Productivity doesn’t always mean progress.
Clinging too tightly to an idea or project and then overthinking or overdoing around it is not nurturing it.
Sometimes, we’re not acting from clarity—we’re reacting from fear.
Fear of falling behind.
Fear of failure.
Fear that if we stop moving, everything will fall apart.
Let’s be honest—how much of your to-do list is actually aligned with your deeper purpose, and how much of it is a fear-based attempt to control outcomes? This requires a deeper reflection because overdoing something can inadvertently cause misalignment by not giving breathing room and space for something to grow.
Control is an illusion we reach for when trust feels too vulnerable.
What is Alignment?
Let’s take a quick moment to understand alignment and why we care about it.
Alignment means your actions are in sync with your deeper values, vision, and truth—not just your fears or external expectations. When you're in alignment, you're not just moving—you’re moving in the right direction. It feels clear, grounded, and purposeful, even when things are uncertain.
We care about alignment because it leads to sustainable energy, meaningful progress, and a sense of inner peace—rather than burnout, resentment, or chasing outcomes that don’t actually fulfill us. It also greatly reduces anxiety (could even eliminate it, depending on your reason for having it).
Is It Action or Avoidance?
Here’s a powerful reframe:
Not all movement is progress. Sometimes, movement is just avoidance or overkill in disguise.
We avoid surrender by staying busy. We avoid discomfort by overdoing. We avoid uncertainty by trying to “get ahead of it.”
We say we’re taking action, but we’re actually avoiding stillness—the place where clarity, truth, and intuition live.
Why We Need to Give Surrender a Chance
Alignment is not something we “do”, it is something we are. Here’s the thing: aligned action in our lives requires space.
If we don’t leave breathing room between our efforts, there’s no time for anything to land. No room for integration. No space for our deeper wisdom to speak up.
This is true in business. In healing. In relationships. In ideas. In projects. The list goes on.
Sure, squeezing harder may technically make things happen faster, but it makes us lose connection to the bigger picture. It also can move you faster in the wrong direction.
Have you ever worked so hard on something only to realize it didn’t help move the needle toward your bigger picture? Maybe you feel like whatever it is you’re aiming for is taking forever. You could be squeezing too tightly and missing the wisdom needed to guide you in the right direction.
When we think about our bigger goals and living in alignment, we aren’t just here to hustle. We’re here to partner with the process. And that means learning to surrender.
Surrender Isn’t Giving Up—It’s Letting Go of the Illusion
Let’s be clear.
Surrender isn’t about doing nothing. It’s not taking a passive route. It’s definitely not toxic positivity. It’s part of a productive cycle that we often overlook in this culture. It’s aligning yourself with the process, so you can actually obtain what you want.
It’s about not doing everything out of fear.
Surrender is a conscious pause. It’s where you stop forcing, and start listening.
It’s where you trust that aligned effort doesn’t need to be micromanaged.
It’s where you stop gripping, and let energy flow.
We miss a lot when we overlook surrender in our process. When we don’t pause, we miss the beat. This is true for everyone. We went in-depth last week about the brain’s role in fear. When we don’t allow the space in between, we are further conditioning our fear patterns. (catch up here).
When we create from this place, we do less—but we move further. Let energy do its thing.
Your Gentle Invitation This Week
Surrender can be a very foreign and scary concept. When I talk about it, how does it make you feel? Do you feel agitated? Do you immediately want to dismiss what you’re reading? Do you think me mad because if you start surrendering, everything will fall apart and nothing will get done? If so, that is fear speaking.
The reflections below aren’t about adding more to your to-do list. It’s about questioning the why behind what you’re already doing. Let’s begin to practice surrender in a gentle, non-threatening, time appropriate way. These reflections also bring us closer to next week’s topic of intuition.
Take a look at your week through this lens:
How often do I pause to reflect between actions? Do I allow things to unfold in my process? Or do I smother (even when it’s good intentions)?
When I ‘do’, think, or analyze a situation, idea, or project, what is happening in my body? Am I feeling tension anywhere? Do I feel drained or energized? Do I a low grade anxiety that makes me take action?
Where am I acting out of fear instead of alignment? This may look like overthinking, overanalyzing, or “doing” too much. Alignment feels gentle, inviting, and curious.
What am I trying to control right now that might not be mine to control? Be honest with yourself.
What would it feel like to pause… and trust that things won’t fall apart?
Where can I make space for life to meet me halfway? When was the last time I let an outcome surprise me, instead of doing everything possible to create a certain outcome?
You might be surprised how much actually works better when you stop holding so tightly.
Surrender in Action
I encourage you to practice surrender by pausing in between tasks or projects this week. Have an idea flowing in? Try not to take immediate action. write it down and come back to it. Finished part 1 of a long to-do list? Pause before starting part 2, walk away, and reward yourself with something. Give at least a moment before getting back to it. The idea is to physically practice space in between things.
If you feel like you’re clinging too tightly to something, then I invite you to do something physical to create surrender. Over these next few weeks, try a little spontaneity in your schedule. Create a list of activities that bring you absolute bliss or joy and go focus on that more than whatever it is you’re clinging to. After a few weeks of this focus shift, come back to said thing and see how your perspective has shifted; notice what new insights you have. You might be surprised at how much wisdom dropped in while you were away.
Next time, we’ll explore one of the most important tools in this whole conversation: how to tell the difference between fear and intuition. Because they feel eerily similar (seeing as they share limbic activity in the brain), but lead us in completely different directions.
I’m sending so much love! Happy Sunday, my friends.
Thank you for this incredibly timed and wonderfully insightful article. So much to reflect on 💗🙏🏻