Life is a full spectrum of possibilities, some more palatable than others. Any events that ramp up emotions and anxiety can bring waves of tension into your physical, spiritual, mental and emotional bodies. This can result in both acute and chronic trauma. Keep reading and discover how you can heal, even while experiencing fear and stress.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Are you basically OK?
The Practice:
Notice you’re alright right now.
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.
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:
What puts people at ease?
The Practice:
Give no one cause to fear you.
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.”
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.
The deepest parts of you know that if freedom from fear was as easy as "creating a new reality" for yourself, then you would already be the fearless person you know in your heart that you're meant to be. It's just not that easy...which brings us to a great liberating truth, an insight you must prove to yourself before you can know its power to dismantle any fear. When it comes to the fearless life, the Divine gives nothing freely . . . save to those who freely give themselves to discovering the truth about their own fearless Self. The good news is that this supreme confidence and calm already lives within you, needing only your realization of its unshakable presence to empower you with the fearlessness you seek.
The following seven laws are like a golden invitation to your own coronation. To "open" each one, and receive its royal instruction about how to live free of fear, you need do only one thing: ask sincerely that you might understand its secret message and then, when the answer comes, welcome those insights as long lost Friends...for that is exactly what they are. They will do the rest for you.
Why do you fear connecting to others? Have you noticed that your life is more enjoyable when you stay in your comfort zone and never put yourself out there? I know you might be wondering how to overcome your fear of connecting to others.
I'm here to help! First, let's start by defining this fear and what it means for your life.
Fear is a natural human emotion that can protect us from danger or hurt. It helps us avoid situations where we feel vulnerable and unsafe, but sometimes it tends to go hand in hand with anxiety.
Fear can be defined as a "powerful emotion that makes you afraid or anxious about something harmful, unpleasant, or threatening." When we feel fear, our heart rate increases and adrenaline flows through our bodies. This feeling in the body is a natural response to danger.
The problem with fear is when it becomes an overused reaction to situations. Because of this, many people have developed post-traumatic stress disorder. They are being exposed to too many trauma-related stimuli without time to process their feelings about them.
Halloween used to be one of my favorite holidays. When my kids were young, I loved dressing up with them and going trick-or-treating. I enjoyed watching the looks of amazement on their faces as they ran from house to house in our neighborhood. They alternated between looks of terror when they encountered scary decorations, and then looks of thrill beyond belief when they scored a Kit Kat or Reese's peanut butter cup.
Fear and joy all in one night! That’s what Halloween represented for our family.
I thought about that this week as we approached this holiday. I experienced great joy a few days ago as I got to watch my granddaughter dress up as a daisy for her very first Halloween. It was beyond adorable. I felt so much joy getting to share this experience with her.
Breaking free from negative thinking isn’t about techniques. It’s a revolution. You are literally going to walk in a different world. Because negative thinking, is just a mistaken idea about what’s possible and who you really are. And you have no idea what this kind of cruel perspective is costing you.
You may be unconsciously sabotaging your own life with negative thinking and fear. Your thoughts can create anxiety, frustration, and pain. A negative mindset can weaken your marriage, career, health, or more.
But likewise, you can shift into well-being and possibility. You can restore your connection to peace, sanity and even infinite creativity.
How? Here are five ways I’ve used with clients to stop negative thinking:
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.