The emotion of fear and how it can appear to be running our life is of great importance to have an inquiry about. We sometimes believe that the emotion of fear is running our life, that it can stop us, control us and limit us from getting out of life what we say we want. We do have a tendency to believe that fear is the cause of some of our problems, some of the difficulties that we are experiencing. While there is some truth to this, it is more that fear is an emotion that we experience, sometimes to the point that we truly believe that it stops us. As an emotion fear has something in common with all emotions. An emotion or feeling is how our body experiences our thinking, how we experience thoughts and beliefs in our body. The emotion of fear is no different as it is created or driven by a thought, one very fundamental and basic to our very core, of who we think we are. Fundamentally we believe that we are not good enough, and as a result experience the emotion of fear as well as others emotions and feelings. Fear is about me believing that I can not really handle life, that somehow it will handle me, that I am not adequate enough as a person to live life fully, that somehow I am not good enough to do life properly. Once I have that I am not good enough I will perceive of the world and others as more powerful and adequate than me and as a result be open to the emotional response of fear when life starts to show up as I created it.
Monthly Archives: May 2010
When is someone ready to transform his or her life?
The question of when is someone ready to transform his or her life is an important one to consider. Such a question is important for any therapist or sponsor to consider and contemplate. It is my opinion that a person is ready to transform their life when they are ready to do the work and become committed to the process. This does not mean that they will not resist the process as they definitely will resist. It does not mean that there will be no upsets or breakdowns during the person’s transformation because there will be, something that should be counted on happening. Resistance and breakdowns are part of the deal, part of the journey. In addition,a person is ready to transform his or her life when they begin to move their inquiry and focus to themselves and away from others, away from people, places and things, when they give up the blame and thinking that someone else is the cause of their life. A person is ready to transform their life when they start to assume responsibility for the life, for how they act, feel and think, for their very way of being.
Commitment is key to transforming your life.
Staying committed to changing your life is so important. Commitment is key to transforming your life. Once we decide what we have to change in our life, in our way of being, to be different, we make the changes in how we do life. But to keep the transformation in place takes a great deal of commitment, commitment to staying the course, to staying present to the path, to not give up when the course appears problematic and doubt appears. Changing our life usually also involves creating a structure or routine that will enable the transformation to evolve or emerge. Staying present to and committed to the structure or schedule will enable us to continue altering our life. It is inside a structure, schedule or routine that we will change our life, to create new habits from which to live differently and more authentically.
Watch your word as you create your experiences.
Watch your word! Stay present to what you think and especially what you say. Choose to say positive things about yourself and about others. What you think and say creates your experiences of how life will be and occur for you. If I say and say positive things there will be a tendency for positive experiences to be created. If I say negative things there will be a tendency for negative experiences to be created. I do have a choice in this matter. In addition, saying positive things about myself and others feels good, saying negative things does not. It all starts with my word, what I say. What I say is what I put out into the world, and being that which directly affects my behavior, my actions tend to be in alignment with what I am saying, my word.
Staying present to and expressing my truth.
Staying present to and committed to expressing my truth is important. I need to say what I believe and not hold it back, or create reasons to not say what I need to say to others. We have a tendency to hold back, to not say what we want to say to others, creating the excuse that we do not want to hurt the other person’s feelings. What happens is that we hold our truth back and are not honest with the other person and inauthentic with ourselves. We end up not being fully self expressed with the other person and the relationship suffers. While we say that we do not want to hurt the other person’s feelings it is really we do not want the other person to leave us. If I say what I want and need to say the person may not like what I have to say and will leave me. That is the fear. That is truly why I do not share my truth with the other person. In the end the relationship may not survive if I am honest but then again maybe it was not meant to be. Holding onto something that maybe should not have been, because of my fear, my fear of being alone, is truly inauthentic and in the end, will not continue regardless of what we hold back.
It is in our word and action that our responsibility is expressed.
We are responsible for our life. It is in our word and action that our responsibility is expressed. What we say, our word, is important, it has an impact. But unless our behavior or action matches up with our word, there is no being authentic or integrity in our life. Being responsible is carrying out our word, doing what we say we would do. We have to be very present to what we say we will do or promise, present that when we say something that we will do for someone that we will actually do it, not just say so and not fulfill on our promise. How we show up in life to others will be determined by how responsible we appear to them, how much we honor our word. We are our word, and actions, to others in life.
Taking responsibility for life.
It is important to take complete ownership and responsibility for your life. We do need to understand that we have created and chosen your life the way it is occurring for you. We are the cause of what we experience and our life. This is a true point of power, to fully accept and acknowledge this. We are the cause of life and not the effect, even though sometimes we believe we are the latter. Restoring our power is to assume our responsibility, for everything in our life. To practice taking responsibility is to accept life and ourselves as they are, fully, openly, with no blame.
Acceptance is the key to transformation
Acceptance is the answer to all of our problems. Our power comes from accepting people, places and things as they are, not as we would like them to be. The struggle of life is the result of trying to make things, people and places out to be the way that we think they should or ought to be. When we give up the desire to make things and people as we want to them to be we restore our power, we put ourselves in alignment with reality Our power comes from accepting reality as reality is, not how we want it to be. We have no control over others, only ourselves. We can practice acceptance, as that is in our control. Accepting people, places and things as they are and as they are not. To accept is to transform our life.
In the face of no agreement.
What do we do in the face of no agreement? There will be times when what we do in life, say at our work place, will receive no agreement. It may be that we are critiqued or criticized for something that we have done. It is at these times that we may experience an upset, feel frustrated and even angry at what the other person is saying about us. Our tendency is to get defensive and strike back in some form or manner. In this process it is important to keep in mind that we are not our behavior and that we are doing the best that we can. Our behavior may need to be worked on and revisions made but that we are not doing something according to what others think we should be doing is not a statement about our value and work as a human being. Rather it is merely a statement about our behavior. We have a tendency to think that we are what we do. Take a look at your behavior to see if there is anything that you need to do differently. If so merely do it, do it differently. Life will be at times about having to live with no agreement.
Our tendency is to stay the same.
While we realize that change is both important and necessary, we will have a tendency to stay the same, to not change. We are creatures of habit in just about everything that we do in life. For us to change we will have to do a variety of things, most of them counter to how we have been doing business in life, sometimes for years. First we have to outline what it is we need to do. For this we will need help from others, through counsel or sponsorship. Second we need to create a schedule that will give us the opportunity to implement what we have come to believe is necessary for our transformation. Third, we have to stay committed to the program that we have created and realize that it will take time, that it will not happen immediately or over night. We have to be patient and persistent. Realizing that our tendency though is to stay the same give us power to transform our life.
