Fear is debilitating. It robs you of your self-worth and paralyzes you when you even think about taking action towards your goals.

This is a built-in hardwired response to anything that would put your life in danger. It's a left-over evolutionary survival trait that is meant to keep us alive.

When you understand that fear is the way your subconscious mind deals with anything out of the ordinary you begin to understand that it's there for a reason. It's cautioning you that you need to make a plan. That you shouldn't proceed any further until you've replaced the unknown with the known.

Once this is understood, you can start to separate your fears into two buckets.

* Fears that keep you alive, and

* Fears that keep you from living

Fears that keep you alive are cautioning you not to do something stupid that may potentially kill you. Fears that keep you from living are trying to maintain the status quo.

It's the latter type of fear that is keeping you from having the audacity to dream big. It will rob you of your forward momentum as you hit the seemingly insurmountable wall of fear that is blocking your path. 

5 Signs That You're Living With Fear That's Keeping You From Living Your Life To The Fullest

Fear lives on a spectrum. On one end fears are mild, on the other end fears are debilitating. On the mild end are the good fears that motivate you to plan and to succeed. It keeps you moving forward because it provides you with positive stress and encouragement.

On the debilitating end, fear turns into procrastination and perfectionism. It robs you of your desire to put in the work and prevents you from moving forward.

Your mind is a powerful thing, it will convince you that the fears you're feeling are totally justifiable. That they are meant to keep you alive when in fact they are keeping you from living.

Here are a few signs that your fears are holding you back.

#1: You Feel Hopeless

Hope is the feeling or expectation that something desirable is going to happen. When hope is taken away, the space it occupied within you is replaced with fear.

#2: Frequent Procrastination

Putting things off can be a major sign of fear avoidance. The idea is that if you never get started how can you fail? If you never do the things that you fear failing, then you don't have to worry about living with those fears or that failure.

Procrastination is often confused with perfectionism.  Many times we get so focused on getting things right that we never get around to doing whatever it was that we were preparing for.

#3: Highly Distractable

Our subconscious is powerful. It likes to trick us by throwing roadblocks in our path that will inhibit our forward movement.

When fear takes over, everything is more important than the task that needs getting done. We become easily distracted by email, social media, and other less important tasks

#4: Concerns About What Others Might Think

Being concerned about what others might think about you is a classic sign that you're living with the fear of failure, or even the fear of success.

Fear of SuccessFear of success is a very real thing. So much so that fear of success, much like fear of failure, will keep you stuck. Both fear of failure and fear of success share the same root, fear. Many times people fear success because they feel that they aren't up to the challenge that success brings with it, it could even be that they are more introverted and fear the extra attention they may get.There are many reasons why people fear success, do you?

#5: Chronic Stress

Since fear lives on the spectrum I mentioned earlier, the closer you get to the debilitating side the more stress you feel. A certain amount of stress is both encouraging an...