What are you afraid of? Does your fear stop you from doing great things with your life? Could it? 

Last month we put out an important curriculum about FEAR. Since so many of our members were on summer break we have decided to re-run the same curriculum this month. Why? Well we are going to come back to the topic of fear repeatedly throughout the coming year because it's important.

While we want to teach you what's going on in the world and how you can help, we also want to help you remain fearless and hopeful and that requires that we talk honestly about the role fear plays in our lives. So this month we start a conversation about how to keep fear from holding you back as you get older. Everyone in the world feels fear but few people talk about it. Since we will be building on this as the months pass, we want to be sure everyone has a chance to see this. 

If you've already watched the video, then here's your challenge. You've been thinking about fear for a while now. You have an extra month to actually find a way to face your fear like I do with mine in the video. If you do, I would love to hear about it or see it. So please send it in so we can celebrate your success together. 

Love you all...

-Sara Johnson, Founder

Think About:

• What are you afraid of? Are there any fears that might be a bit irrational?
• What is your fear keeping you from doing? Have you missed out of opportunities to grow as a person because you were afraid?
• How can you learn to be brave in spite of your fear?
• Is everyone in the world is afraid, how does that impact people who need help? What are we not doing that we might do if we weren't afraid?
• How do we create a generation who isn't controlled be fear? A fearless generation? 

Activities:

• Share a fear you have with your group. Be brave. Be honest. If you are reading this on your own, share a fear with a friend or family member. Or send us an email with your thoughts or a short video. We would LOVE to hear from you!  

• Accept the challenge from the video, if Sara can do it, so can you! Feel free to do the challenge with a friend or your troop. Just find an opportunity this month to Crush Your Fear! Film it and send it to us to share with other members of MGA. Together we can face the fears that are holding us back. Send videos to: [email protected]

• "Fears in a Hat." With your troop or your family, everyone take a minute and a slip of paper to write down a fear. Collect all the slips of paper and put them in a hat. This way no one knows which fear belongs with which person. Pull them out one by one and read them to the group. Spend a minute or two on each one brainstorming as a group how to overcome that fear. Continue until you've read each slip of paper.

• Create your own "Fear Factor" game. Leaders create three shoeboxes with "curtain" openings in the side and fill each shoebox with strange feeling items. Each MGA member must reach through the curtain into the box and feel what is inside, pushing aside their fear of not knowing what will be there. Don't say what you think it is out loud. Change up what is inside each box, making things surprising to touch. After everyone has had a turn, share how you felt and what you think was inside.

• There are many girls around the world in really scary and fearful situations. They need our help. Keep them in mind as you face your own, smaller fears. Sometimes thinking about helping someone in a worse situation makes a smaller fear less frightening. Remember you can also bravely do more for them. You have your very own profile on the MGA website. There you can set up a personal fundraising campaign to raise money to help other girls be rescued from their scary situations. Be brave. Think outside the box. How can you help even more than you are? 

Additional Resources:

• Curious whether your fear is common among your peers? Stage of Life, a website that explores all things related to teenagers did a study to uncover what teens worry about and fear in their lives. Read about it on their site and see the solutions teens came up with for facing their fears. You can even read a winning essay or two written by teens telling their stories of what they fear and how they overcame it.

• Need a step-by-step guide to help you learn to face your fear successfully? There's a great one here. If you put in the time to walk through the steps, you will crush the fear holding you back in no time!