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Hello, fearless one.

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There's a question I want you to sit with today.

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What is really driving your life and your business?

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In other words, what is the fuel underneath your decisions?

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Is it love or is it fear?

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The Bible tells us in 1 John 4, verse 18 that perfect love casts out fear.

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If perfect love casts out fear,

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then fear and love cannot occupy the same place of authority in our lives.

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One will always shape how we see ourselves, other people, and the future.

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But fear is not simply an emotion.

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What if fear is also the frame through which we interpret life?

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Let's dive into that today.

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Hi, I'm Nerissa Golden, host of the Fairless One podcast.

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I'm an author, strategist, mom, entrepreneur, and lover of Jesus Christ.

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I get a kick out of helping my friends and clients unlock the value in their gifts and business.

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And for the next few minutes, I want to encourage you to do the same.

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Let's go.

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Before we go any further,

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why not share the link to this episode with a friend or on your social media?

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It goes a long way to helping me increase my audience.

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Thank you for doing that.

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Back when I was writing my second book,

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The Making of a Caribbeanpreneur,

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Challenges to Overcoming Fear and Building Wealth,

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I discovered that we are all born with only two natural fears,

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the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.

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Every other fear is learned.

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Many of those learned fears we acquired probably before the age of eight and

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the rest by the time we enter our early adult years.

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But what I want you to know is that if you learn the fear, it can also be unlearned.

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Many of us spend years believing we are afraid of failure,

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rejection, success, visibility, money, or uncertainty.

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But perhaps those are not the real fears.

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Perhaps they are simply the result of a story we have believed for so long

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that it feels like the truth.

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The question is this.

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Which story is shaping your decisions?

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The story that says you are loved, chosen, and provided for by God?

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Or the story that says you're alone,

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disconnected, not enough, and that there will never be enough?

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Those two stories produce two completely different lives.

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They produce two completely different businesses.

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One builds from abundance, the other builds from scarcity.

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One builds from identity, the other builds from insecurity.

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One trusts the other controls.

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One creates the other merely survives.

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I have noticed that many entrepreneurs probably tell the story of growing up with very little.

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They say things like, I never want to be broke again.

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It sounds admirable.

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It sounds motivated.

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And in many ways it is, but it is worth asking another question.

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Is your business being built because you love what God has called you to create

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Or because you're trying to outrun a past you are still afraid of.

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There is a profound difference.

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Imagine two sisters brought up in the same home with the same experiences of poverty.

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Both grew up to be incredibly wealthy.

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Yet one sister has a persistent fear of being poor again,

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while the other no longer sees herself as poor and that poverty will never be

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in her future.

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The external circumstances may have changed for the sisters.

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However, they have different perspectives on their lives.

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One is still looking backwards.

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The other has accepted a new identity.

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That is the difference between living from fear and living from love.

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The Apostle Paul understood this when he wrote,

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forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things

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which are ahead, I press toward the goal.

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Paul wasn't pretending the past never happened.

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He simply refused to let the past become the architect of his future.

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Psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy makes a similar point in his work, Be Your Future Self Now.

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He argues that extraordinary people allow their vision of the future to shape

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the present instead of allowing the past to dictate what they believe is possible.

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The Bible has been teaching this all along.

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Faith has always been future focused.

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Fear is usually past focus.

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Fear asks, what if it happens again?

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Faith asks, what has God promised?

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Fear remembers failure.

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Faith remembers God's faithfulness.

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I recently discovered author and teacher Jamie Winship,

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who coincidentally wrote a book called Living Fearless a few years before I did.

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He offers another perspective that I found incredibly helpful.

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He encourages people to ask God a simple question when revisiting painful memories.

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Jesus, where were you?

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Not to change what happened, but to discover what was true that we couldn't see at the time.

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Many of us have interpreted difficult moments as proof that we were abandoned,

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rejected, or incapable.

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What would the Lord say if we were to ask him where he was in the midst of

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the poverty and the pain?

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God is love and his response would reveal that love even in

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the moment we could not see it or feel it.

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He is not the accuser of the brethren.

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He doesn't chastise us.

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He is always looking at us and seeing his beloved.

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The event doesn't change, but the way in which we can interpret what happened can change.

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And when the meaning changes, our future changes.

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I recently tried this exercise with an old belief system that I had battled with

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since I was a child.

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It was connected to a memory about visiting the homes of some

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of my wealthy classmates in high school.

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I really enjoyed hanging out with them and it wasn't because they had a big house.

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They were just these two friendly girls who were kind and we could be really silly together.

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It didn't matter that they were Indian and I was black, we were just little island girls.

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However,

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I remember one of my parents asking me if I thought I was better than they were

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because I liked going to my friends' houses.

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I don't think I visited their house too often after that and I confess it framed

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a lot of how I showed up in the years following.

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I found that I was always dumbing down myself,

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my appearance,

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my language to not be seen as too much or trying to be better than other people.

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It also meant I kept back my own growth professionally and financially.

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It was always easier to defer to others rather than put myself forward or first.

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This is an issue I have brought before the Lord many times and I have released it

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and my parents because they didn't know what they didn't know.

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That was their own framing and perception.

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But I asked the Lord a few days ago, what did you want me to know in that situation?

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His response was simple.

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I wanted you to see there was more to be had and it was available for you too.

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There is a lot of work being done today on helping people to shift their mindset.

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But this goes beyond mindset to your belief system.

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It's about the lens through which you see the world.

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If your worldview says that wealth and good things are for those people over there

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and not people like you,

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then that is how your operating software,

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your mind, will process and deliver the world to you.

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If you can see your world through the lens of what your creator designed for you,

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which is blessed,

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fruitful,

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multiplying and dominating,

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then you are going to have a different experience of the world.

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Think about how this would affect your business.

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If fear is driving you, every client feels like your last chance.

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Every setback feels catastrophic.

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Every competitor feels like a threat.

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You struggle to charge appropriately because you fear people saying no.

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You hold on to every task because you fear nobody else will do it properly.

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You hesitate to launch because you fear criticism.

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You say yes to work that doesn't fit because you fear there won't be another opportunity.

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Fear becomes an exhausting business partner.

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But when love and abundance become your foundation, your decisions begin to change.

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You know your value isn't determined by one client.

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You know provision doesn't come from one contract.

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You know your identity doesn't rise and fall with your bank balance.

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You can say no.

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You can delegate.

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You can think long term.

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You can build something that lasts.

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The same principle applies to our health.

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Many people grow up where food was scarce or where treats became the reward

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after difficult times.

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Years later, they still eat as though scarcity is around the corner.

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Not because they're hungry, but because fear and memories of hunger are making the decision.

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Love asks a different question.

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How do I care well for the body God has entrusted to me?

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What do I eat so that I can have a body that can carry me through all the seasons of life?

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God promises with long life he will satisfy us.

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We want to be living long and healthy, not long and in pain and miserable.

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We can look at money the same way.

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Fear hoards and fear also overspends.

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Isn't it interesting that opposite behaviors can come from the same root?

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One person clings tightly because they fear there won't be enough.

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Another spends everything because they fear missing out.

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Both are operating from scarcity.

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But thank God,

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love stewards,

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love plans,

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love gifts generously, love trust God's provision without becoming careless.

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This is why our identity matters so much.

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If I believe I am alone, then everything depends on me.

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If I believe I am loved by God,

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then I can work hard without carrying the weight of believing the whole world rests

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on my shoulders.

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That doesn't remove responsibility, it transforms it.

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I believe this is one of the greatest invitations of walking with God.

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Not simply to become more confident but to exchange the frame through which we see everything.

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To stop interpreting life through fear and begin interpreting life through the love of God.

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Because love changes how you see failure.

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Love changes how you see opportunity.

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Love changes how you see yourself.

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And ultimately love changes what you build.

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So today I leave you with this question.

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When you look honestly at your business,

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your finances,

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your health,

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and your relationships, are you building from fear or are you building from love?

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Remember the fearless framework.

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You are blessed before you achieve anything because your identity comes from God.

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As you embrace that identity,

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you become fruitful, developing the gifts he has placed within you.

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You multiply by creating value that serves others.

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And you exercise dominion by stewarding everything he has entrusted to you

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with wisdom and courage.

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You don't have to spend your life trying to escape your past.

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You can build your future by agreeing with what God has already declared about you.

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Live fearless.

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Thank you for listening to Fairless One with Nerissa Golden.

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If this episode has inspired you to take action or encouraged you

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to pursue your own fearless journey,

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please leave me a comment wherever you are listening.

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Be sure to subscribe to be notified of future episodes and share it with someone you know.