Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined what ‘perfection’ really means and the beliefs and thinking that accompany the need to be perfect or have a perfect life. This week I would like to examine ‘Fear’, what it really is, what it feels like in the mind and body and the harm it can do in your life if you don’t take the time to identify, examine and learn to manage it.
Belief: If only I didn’t feel so much fear, I could do so much more with my life!
Not sure how many of you have noticed my url for this blog ‘loveyourfear.com’. The reason why I chose this name is because as a human race we suffer so much from fear. We suffer because fear diminishes our capacity to feel any other emotion, except fear itself! We are fearful of pretty much everything and everyone in this age of competition. We try so hard to prove our worth to everyone around us and to ourselves. And we try to prove our worth because deep inside we don’t feel worthy yet and we think if we do this and achieve that and accomplish that and make others happy and do some charity, we will be able to feel that elusive feeling of ‘being worthy’ in this world which is crowded with too many humans. And in this process of living, this fear that I am talking about may show up almost anywhere, anytime – as we try to accomplish all that I just mentioned or if we tried but failed or so many times we still keep feeling this fear even after we have accomplished and achieved because now we fear losing it all! And interestingly, this is how most humans have been living their lives in this new age! And this fear is not just restricted to adults anymore, it’s penetrated the lives of our kids as well. They learn to live in fear from us because fear has become part of our parenting style. And this is why as a society, we are more and more in need of psychologists and psycho-therapists. This is why, even though as a society we have achieved and accomplished so much more than all of our previous generations combined, we have amassed so much more wealth, we have become so much more technologically advanced, we have created products that can provide so much comfort and safety, science has advanced the life span of humans in so many part of the world, yet, we are not nearly as ‘fearless’ as we had hoped we would be when we started down this path. Fear ‘appears to be’ the biggest block in living and experiencing our lives fully while we are here on earth UNTIL we change our perspective on fear.
Personally, the biggest lesson I have learned from spending many years living a life of anxiety is that you have to view fear from another perspective – a perspective of love rather than fear. You have to learn to be fearless in the face of fear itself and instead view it as an opportunity to learn something more about your subconscious and therefore grow even more as a human being. You have to learn to identify whenever fear presents itself in your mind through negative thoughts, you have to learn to not just feel this fear but also have the courage to be at peace with the fact that you are feeling this fear. You have to learn to continue to do what you are very afraid of doing or trying or just being in this world even though you are feeling this enormous fear inside your mind and body. And when you are able to do all of this, listen closely, because fear will have a message for you. It will show you the mirror exactly where you need to grow in your life but are very afraid to. Folks, what I have learned and still continue to learn each day is that there is a very important reason for fear to be present in your life. Most importantly, fear tries to raise your consciousness level that you are currently at. It teaches you to believe in yourself, to never doubt yourself, to love and value yourself, to become the person you are meant to be in this lifetime!! I truly believe it!
Living in fear not only causes us emotional and physical pain and discomfort, it also robs a human from experiencing their own life! A human being who lives in a constant state of anxiety, experiences that state because of fear. And this fear comes from the thoughts that our minds create, although, there are some human beings who have developed the ability to see through the dark veil of fear. They can really tell the difference between when they are feeling ‘real’ fear and their bodies as a result should get into the fight or flight mode versus when that fear really is ‘false evidence appearing real’. If this is the kind of fear you feel in your own life, have you ever taken the time to wonder and ponder? I know it’s an amazingly difficult and uncomfortable thing to do. I know because I have done it and still do it when I feel my favorite friend fear and honestly yes it’s been so very painful and uncomfortable but it has taught me my biggest lesson in this life – there is no need to fear this fear. It’s just an emotion which needs your love and attention and once it has that, it will go back to where it came from. But in order to do what I and some of you who already do this in your own life, it requires amazing amounts of courage because this really is my own mess that I am trying to look at and not someone else’s which is so very easy to look at and judge and preach upon. But only when you gather the courage to finally start looking at your own mess is when you actually find that there is really a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. And you also realize that this light was there all along but instead of looking at this beautiful bright light, you had your eyes closed this entire time that you were moving through the tunnel that represents your life!! And you had your eyes closed this entire time because you didn’t really want to acknowledge that you and everyone around you is a part of this beautiful and powerful Universe! And because you are part of this Universe, you are already equipped with everything you need to live your best life this time around :)..You are just afraid to accept that…more on this sometime 🙂
There is a meditation that I frequently do to accept and let go of fear from my own life. Once I sit down to meditate, I imagine I am a small child, maybe 3-4 years old who is very scared. I imagine I am hugging this child and kissing it and telling it that it’s safe and it’s always going to be ok no matter what happens in life. And I just continue to sit and feel everything that is brought up for me in that moment…Make your own version and give it a try. It’s an amazingly powerful meditation.
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
