God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power and one of love and one of a sound mind. 

2 Timothy 1:7

The world tells our girls that fear is a normal, even healthy, emotion, but our girls are going to know better.

Fear of the Lord? Yes, that’s the beginning of wisdom, but your girl is not going to have a spirit of fear. She will not be overcome by her struggles or victimized by her circumstances. She will not be forced into submission by the things she comes up against that make her feel afraid.

Challenge: Introduce her to the idea of “going with her gut.” There are many benefits to honing in on our innate ability to perceive something beyond verbal language. These feelings can help us avoid danger, and the challenge for you as her mom and mentor is to help her learn how to differentiate between fear and her natural intuition. 

Action Step: Discuss this openly with her: she can pay careful attention to her body and learn to trust what it is telling her (which is what God designed her to do). This will help her connect to the voice inside. 

In the same way that our intuition helps us avoid harm or “have a feeling” that someone is in need, too often on the other side something negative happens when that voice inside is ignored. So when your girl decides to go with her gut and the outcome is positive, it will have an immensely powerful effect on her confidence.

Learning to respond to her own intuitive messages is key. Deciphering what her gut is telling her is the real skill. So often our gut is saying something to us that we don’t necessarily want to hear.

Help your girl identify when a reaction is a “gut” reaction. She needs to learn to be present to what her body is telling her. Being nervous or excited and describing it as “butterflies in the stomach” is a good way to introduce this to her. In the same breath though, “butterflies in the stomach” are not the same as having a “knot in the stomach”. Both sensations are experienced in the gut, but they represent totally different feelings.  

What you’re going to do is train her to listen to her body and decide whether or not she can trust what it is telling her.

A lot of the time, our gut is activated by emotions that are considered by some to be negative. We get a feeling that makes us nervous, scared, confused or one that is surprising or disturbing.

As she learns to pay attention to her intuition, it’s going to be good to talk through different scenarios with her.

Here are three quick and easy tips to encourage your daughter to deal with fear rather than allowing it to deal with her.

1. Ask questions.

The goal is to help her think for herself, understand what she is thinking and begin to trust what her body is telling her.

“What do you think about that?”

“How is that making you feel?”

“What do you notice about your body right now?”

2.  Value her input.

When she comes to you with an idea or thought about a particular issue or challenge, receive it with enthusiasm. Honor her for bringing something to your attention that she thought was important. Acknowledge her as someone who brings value.

3.  Model intuitive thinking out loud.

A great way to develop her intuition is to allow her to see it in action. When you encounter situations in your own life where you have to flex your intuitive muscle, talk about them with her in real time.

You can also share stories about times when you went “with your gut” and how it ended up working out favorably. She can learn a lot from these examples.

Have an awesome day!