In honor of the recent release of my new book, Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate, for the next few months I’ll be interspersing posts based on excerpts from the book. I’d love to hear your feedback! Here goes …
In my travels as a speaker, I’ve encountered countless women like me who have spent years running from their own personal fear monsters.
Some fears have names and specific countenances; others are faceless, frightening creatures that lurk in the shadows just out of sight. But we know they’re there. We feel them. And we yearn to boldly step up to those fear monsters and yank off their masks.
In order to pinpoint real fears women struggles with on a daily basis, I conducted a survey of 500 random women between the ages of 18 and 80. I was surprised at the results – I fully expected fear of being alone to rank among the top two or at least three, but it was number six!
There are five other fears that dog us gals even more.
Okay, just for fun, before you read any further, take out a pad and pen and see if you can guess what the top ten fears of all the women polled were. Dollars to doughnuts your own personal fear monsters will show up somewhere on that list.
Ready to see how good a guesser you are? Here’s the bottom half of the top 10 list in descending order:
6. Loneliness
7. Dependency on others
8. Rejection
9. Specific critters (e.g. snakes, roaches, rats)
10. Being judged unfairly
So what do you think the top 5 fears are? (Now don’t cheat and look it up in F3!)
Yup, I’m gonna make you wait until my next post for the answer. But I’ll give you a hint: The #1 fear was w-a-y out in front ahead of the others; in fact, double the percentage of women listed it as their worst fear above even the next highest fear (#2).
Holy moley! What do you think frightens women hands down more than anything else?