Has there ever been a time in your life -- a period of real self-enriching growth -- that wasn't connected to a risk you either willingly undertook or -- to a time of inner trial where there was no other choice for you but to take a risk? Of course, there's only one answer to this question, and it's one recognized as being true wherever you may ask it in the world: The prize of greater wisdom and inner strength always goes to those who take, in one way or another, the risk.

Taking conscious risks can be such a powerful catalyst for inner change. A conscious risk involves making a choice to do what’s true, in spite of what that choice may cost you. On the other side of any conscious risk is the realization that who you really are has nothing to fear. But, in order to make this self-liberating discovery, you must willingly face those fears, whatever they may be. 

What do you do when you face difficulties in your life? 

It’s a question all of us need to answer because we all face them. It’s not a matter of if you’ll face difficulties, but when.

You can’t avoid these circumstances, situations, or conditions. They will come to you at some point in your life. Today, I’d like to talk about different scenarios you might face with a few case studies, including my own. 

More than that, though, I want to offer you some tools to face these challenges and come out the other side stronger than when you began. These dark times come into your life, but they don’t need to keep you from your dreams or from living into your purpose.

We are living in intense times.

It’s easy to let external circumstances hijack our ability to be present and instead live in fear.

During these times, you, yourself, or you might have friends, who seem to be stuck in fear-based thinking and living.

This can be very challenging, especially if you’re someone who is committed to living with an open heart and boldly.

I was recently asked the question, ‘How do I help my friends around me who seem stuck living in fear?’ So I decided to share my response in a video blog. I hope you’ll find it valuable and share it with all of those love.

What is behind the fear of unwanted change? The uninvestigated mind says that I’m going to sustain a loss: "he's going away," "the business is slipping," etc. The fear of loss is connected in our mind with the image of what had previously given us the feeling of succeeding. So now here’s reality, and it's pretty different than our image of what should be, and we’d rather live with the image than look at reality. But the fact of the matter is, we can see clearly now that something "bad" has happened to us and there is this sense of loss.

Why is that loss so traumatic to us? Because that loss, if it's real, means that we’re going to have to literally reorient ourselves to life. That's why we don't want the loss. It’s because the present relationship that we have imagined defines us in our world. We are defined by our relationships, and if a relationship starts to change, the way we’re defined in life and the way we know ourselves starts to change. And we don't want that. We don't want anything we have imagined to be real to show us that it's not, because the super-structure of our self as it stands is rooted in this imagined life from which we derive these feelings of security as we imagine ourselves in it.

If you were empowered to change life -- in order to give yourself whatever is always good and true for you to know and have -- would you ever make any other kind of changes? For example, would you fear unexpected events, such as a loss of any kind? No! Even though they may come as a surprise, you already know that they herald a new beginning of something better.

Would you resist the passage of time and the slow changes that grow out of it like branches on a tree? No! You already know that patience and willingness to persist through what is being revealed -- even if momentarily bitter -- will bring only sweeter fruits.

In this life, we have one of two choices when it comes to painful events, past or present. We can either go on hating and fearing what we think life has done to us (or others), and let these negative reactions create our experience for us ... or we can learn to use these same dark reactions to free ourselves from them. But just wanting to learn the truth isn't enough; we have to be willing to see the truth if we want its liberating touch.

Hating the past and blaming it for the pain we're in now seems to justify our continuing suffering. But whatever justifies blame and hatred is, itself, a part of – in league with – these negative states.