How Wisdom Can Counter Fear

In anxious times the focus on fear seems constant and yet extremely unhelpful. Neither the body nor the mind can adapt to fear for long stretches of time without causing bad effects. If you feel fearful and you want to feel differently, what path should you take? 

People tend to be unsuccessful at finding a way out of anxiety.  That’s because the two most common responses to anxiety are denial and distraction. By ignoring your anxiety or doing something that takes your mind off it, you might find temporary relief. But is there something more permanent and effective? 

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Taking Your Wounded Self Lightly

All of us have a dysfunctional part, a part that operates from fears and false beliefs. This part – our lower left-brain ego wounded self - was deeply programmed from the time we were born to think and behave in ways that, today, create much of our fear and pain.

The purpose of the wounded self is to attempt to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. While the wounded self might profess a belief in a higher power, it doesn't have a personal connection with a loving source of truth, strength, and wisdom, and so it often feels alone in the world. It tries to fill the inner emptiness, which results from being spiritually disconnected, with various addictions - to people, processes, things, and substances.

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Why It’s Never Too Late To Start Over

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced phases in your life where everything seemed to be falling apart. Whether it was due to the loss of a loved one, divorce, being fired from your job, or the failure of a business you started — coming to terms with reality was painful and crushing.

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The Freedom Beyond Fear

At one time or another everyone experiences the modern version of fear, which is anxiety. Our ancestors experienced physical threats that made the fight-or-flight response useful. That’s no longer the case. In modern life, largely thanks to increased stress, we endure a low-level pressure on the nervous system. When this chronic, nagging response rises to the surface of the mind, a person notices the telltale signs of modern fear: worry, insomnia, an absence of happiness, distraction, all of which can build into chronic anxiety.

The way we deal with modern fear determines to a great extent how creative, fulfilling, and contented daily life is. Many billions are spent on tranquilizers, which can reduce the symptoms of anxiety, but they are only a stopgap. Take away the drug, and anxiety almost always returns.

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Notice You’re Alright Right Now

Are you basically OK?

The Practice:
Notice you’re alright right now.

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Fear of Success: How to Defeat It to Reach Your Dreams

Most of us have big dreams for our lives, but when we think about everything we will have to learn and experience to achieve success and make those dreams a reality, our fears can overwhelm us.

But if you don’t face and overcome your fear of success, you run the risk of experiencing greater negative consequences, such as never getting what you want in life. It’s only by facing your fears and taking action anyway that you can achieve your goals and thrive. 


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Stilling Your Soul in Troubled Times

First of all, let’s all pray for peace in Ukraine and ask God to watch over everyone and keep them all safe.

As a sensitive soul, you’re probably feeling pretty stressed and anxious. The best way to center yourself is to ramp up your self-care. Here are a few tips that may help:

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Give No One Cause to Fear You

What puts people at ease?

The Practice:
Give no one cause to fear you.

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Don’t Be Intimidated

What makes you feel threatened?

The Practice:
Don’t be intimidated.

Why?

Humans evolved to be fearful, since anxiety helped keep our ancestors alive. Consequently, we are vulnerable to being alarmed, manipulated, and even intimidated by threats, both real ones and “paper tigers.”

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Turn Dark Tunnels into Bridges of Light

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. 

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How to Find Meaning in Difficult Situations

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.

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How To Help Your Friends Living In Fear

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.

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Reorient Yourself to a Different Order of Life

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.

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Welcome the Freedom that Comes with Being Fearless

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.

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Learn to Use Dark Reactions to Free Yourself from Them

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. 

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Peace Through Your Subconscious Mind

I want to you to identify the greatest enemy of the human race, we know there is only one in that category, that is Fear. It is what inhibits people from reaching their true potential, creating apprehensions and making negative inroads into the mind. 

Simply said we can say that fear is the opposite to Love. Where love exists, there can be no fear. 

LAW OF THE MIND
You have to learn to master your own fear. Try and reach a level of calm and ease within. The subconscious mind is amenable to suggestions . It is controlled by suggestions, give it positive ones. 

STILL YOUR MIND AND RELAX
In this situation,  the thoughts of the conscious mind sink into the sub conscious. This is like osmosis, in which fluids separated by a porous membrane, intermingle. As positive thoughts, sink into the subconscious, they grow with their own kind, and you become poised, serene and calm. 
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Six Things You Can Learn From Guilt

Many people think that guilt is a natural experience. It is a familiar experience, but it is not healthy or productive. It serves no constructive purpose. How can that be? Here are six things to think about the next time you are feeling guilty:

  • Guilt comes from fear. Your spiritual growth requires challenging fear and cultivating love. Holding onto your thoughts and feeling of guilt will not support you or anyone else. They prevent you from living in love, creating in love, and enjoying yourself in love.
  • Guilt impairs your ability to learn from your experiences. When you see something that you could have done differently, or wish you had done differently, remember how you could have spoken or acted in love instead of fear so that you can apply what you have learned next time (not to make yourself feel more guilty). Your experiences are designed to inform, support, and benefit you, not cause you to contract into fear and remorse.
  • Guilt is an experience of a frightened part of your personality, just as the actions that you regret came from a frightened part of your personality. Following fear with fear moves you in the opposite direction that your spiritual development requires, which is toward love.
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Relax Needless Fear Around Others

Does it feel safe with other people?

The Practice:
Relax needless fear around others.

Why?

We all know this fear. You step into a meeting with people you know and still there could be a watchfulness, a restraint, a certain carefulness in how you speak that comes more from subtle anxiety than reasonable prudence. Perhaps someone disagrees with you in this meeting – and you feel uneasy, off balance, unprotected; maybe later you worry what others thought about how you responded to the disagreement: Was I too irritated and pushy? Do they think I’m defensive? What should I do next time? When you get home, let’s say your teenage son is quiet and prickly as usual. You want to tell him that the chilly distance between you feels awful, and you want to open your heart to him . . . but it feels awkward, you’re afraid of making things worse, and when you spoke from the heart while growing up it did not go well and the fears reaching back into your childhood shadow and strengthen your fears today, so you say nothing, again. (I have had to deal with this myself.)

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Accepting What You Can't Control, Controlling What You Can

Coming to grips with what you can and can’t control opens the door to true emotional freedom and personal power. I frequently receive questions about what to do in situations where someone is behaving in an unloving way, or a way that’s painful for them. For example:

  • My co-worker never answers emails, making it very hard for me to do my work, as I need his input.
  • My wife never wants to make love.
  • People often ask me intrusive questions that I don’t want to answer.
  • My husband is often late and never calls to let me know he is going to be late for dinner.
  • My friend got together with a bunch of our friends for lunch and didn’t invite me.
  • My parents are forever criticizing me.
  • I often feel invaded and demanded of by family and friends.
  • My husband sits at the table when we go out to dinner absorbed with his phone instead of talking with me.
  • My children are disrespectful toward me.
  • My wife has a male friend whom she talks with all the time and sometimes meets for lunch, even though I’ve told her I’m uncomfortable with their relationship.
  • My wife often wants to talk about what I’m doing wrong. 


Two Healthy Choices in Conflict

It is important to remember that we have only two healthy ways of dealing with conflict – two loving responses when another is behaving in a way that is upsetting or hurtful to us.

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Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO

There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the Archives).

Note – This talk is dedicated to Tim Ferriss, who turned me on to the phrase FOMO. Tim exemplifies the creative aliveness of FOMO energy when it’s living through someone who’s dedicated to being awake, caring and real. Check out his podcasted interview with Tara at: https://youtu.be/pXNEM4wjSmE​ and his podcast at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/.

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