Be patient with yourself

First, learn to be patient with yourself

“Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal.

Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.”
— Brian Adams

Impatience is the same thing as not living in the NOW. If you are focusing on future outcomes, you cannot be fully appreciating all the wonderful things happening to you in the present moment.

The best place to start practicing the art of patience is with yourself. Once you’ve been able to see some effective positive results, then you can practice patience with your spouse, family, friends, and whomever or whatever you come across in your daily journey.

Fear: Part Two

“Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.”
King Whitney Jr.

We now have the power to change our fears into powerful tools of healing. How do we go about ensuring that we are successful in our attempts to improve our life situation? It is all dependent on the type of fear that was holding us back in the first place. But here are some basic guidelines to conquering your fears and making change a challenge we can enjoy based on The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Dr. Joseph Murphy:

• Fear is a negative thought in your mind. Replace it with a constructive thought each time you catch yourself being fueled by your fear.
• Love chases away fear. It is an emotional attachment to all the good things in life. Love yourself. Expect nothing but the best for yourself, and without fail only the best will come to you.
• Create an affirmation based on the complete opposite of your fear. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by your fear, repeat the affirmation over and over until you feel in control again.
• You can overcome fear when you realize the power of your subconscious mind can change all conditions and therefore you have complete control over your life.
• Remember the things you fear do not really exist except as thoughts in your mind. The power is within you. Focus only on the good and the good will come to you.

Fear - Part 1

“Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.”
—Marilyn Ferguson

In my opinion, fear has to be the most powerful emotion. It can be so controlling that it can prevent just about anyone from really living. It is also very deceptive because most people don’t even know they are being controlled by it. Think about all the ways fear can affect you: fear of intimacy, fear of isolation, fear of commitment, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of moving forward, fear of letting go, fear of getting hurt, fear of not living, fear of living, fear of heights, fear of water. I mean, it can morph into any shape or form that we allow it.

There again is the key. How are we allowing fear to control our lives? Yes, we do have the ability to choose whether or not we let fear rule our lives. It can be a powerful tool of self-discovery when we are honest with ourselves and first recognize that we have fear-controlled issues. Fears are usually not random but are actually very connected to deep rooted events, issues, and emotions. Look your fear in the face and ask it why it is here. Listen to the real answer and you will have the next steps to take in your healing journey.

Let yourself be present to your emotions

“What if, instead of ‘reframing’ my emotions, I simply welcomed them and allowed them to be fully felt? I wonder if I might find this peace she is speaking about in the core of the feeling?”
— Brandon Bays, The Journey

What an interesting concept. Not only does Brandon Bays suggest that you accept your emotions, but she actually believes that we should welcome all our emotions and feel them completely. These days you hear everything from changing your negative thoughts to positive ones, do whatever you can to avoid the emotions, or even recommendations to take drugs to numb the feelings.

It has been on my journey of self-discovery that I have discovered that nothing is what it seems at the surface level. All the emotions I have been working through to get to my best me has proven that my first surface, impression was usually inaccurate. My anger wasn’t just anger, it was fear. My self-destructive thoughts were actually there to show me that I lacked self-confidence. I could go on and on.

Once you allow yourself to feel your emotions fully, but not wallow in them or dump them on someone else, you can start to peal away the layers that have been building up on the original feeling. Sometimes you will even discover that your present day breakdowns have more to do with a past emotional hurt than with the trigger event that brought the feelings up in the present moment.

Leap of faith

“Leap, and the net will appear.” — Julie Cameron

When is leaping into the unknown better than forming an action plan based only on carefully thought out steps? While some feel strongly about acting on belief or intuition (gut instinct as I like to call it since I literally feel it in my gut), others feel that it would be utterly stupid and risky to be so impulsive. But how many of us have really been able to control every aspect of our lives and the circumstances that are often thrust upon us? There will be moments when you have to release control and simply let go and trust.

But trust in what? Trust in yourself, really. That you will survive no matter what the outcome of your leap of faith, you will be able to figure out the next step and the results of the lessons that came with it all.

Fear, worry, perfectionism, negative and limiting beliefs may be the culprits that hold you back from really going for your dreams, but a shift in your thinking process can help you to move past these distractors.

The first step — the leap — is often the biggest one to take on this new journey. But once you have made it, the following steps and corrections will keep you moving toward your ultimate goals.

The Negative and the positive forces in your life

“If you can come to see that nothing — even your pain, sorrow, grief, or anger — was wasted, and that there was a purpose to everything, even your suffering, there can be much healing.”
— Dr. Brenda Davies, Journey of the Soul

It is hard to believe that even our pain and suffering could be considered a good thing, but consider the concept of “Yin and Yang”:

“There are two opposing forces active in the universe. Yin exists in Yang and Yang exists in Yin. This is the changing combination of negative and positive, dark and light, cold and hot which keeps the world spinning and creates Chi - the giving life force.” (Paralumun.com)

Therefore, in order to live a whole and complete life, we must have both experiences. Pain due to fear, or loss, or frustration, or anger, gives us a clear indication of where there is work to be done in our life. Something needs to be resolved so that we can move on to our own paradise that we choose to create. This is done not only through positive thoughts, but through positive action.

Your thoughts are your garden

“My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.”
— Mel Weldon

What are the seeds you are planting in your garden every day? Are they thoughts based on fear, lack, or anger? These types of thoughts planted on a daily basis will most likely result in a garden of weeds. Thoughts based on acceptance, abundance, and love tend to grow a beautiful garden of flowers. More likely, we get a mixture of the two.

I am an avid gardener and when I look out on my garden, I can usually spot at least a weed or two doing its best to sneak in between a bunch of flowers. If I want to maintain my garden with all its blooms, I have to remove the weed quickly, while it is still small, and before it has a chance to spread throughout. Weeds are a tougher species, too. They don’t require you to water and care for them and yet they will still grow and spread. In fact, during the droughts they tend to be the only things to remain in your garden.

Our thoughts are the same. It is normal to have a negative thought now and then attempt to plant itself in our brain. If we are not careful and diligent to remove the negative thought, it will grow bigger and stronger and even start to spread to the rest of our thoughts.

Be the expert gardener of your thoughts and you can ensure a beautiful garden full of flowers and free of weeds. It’s your choice.

Voice your fears to set them (and you) free

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
— Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

When you say what you fear out loud, you will often find how ridiculous, or inaccurate, or inappropriate it is for your life. I had a talk a while back with my husband about one of the fears holding me back from making some simple phone calls. I had to call some people that I didn’t know in order to set up an interview time with them. In my mind I knew that this was no big deal for me to do. I have definitely done more challenging tasks or assignments. So what was holding me back? Why was I so afraid to just make these calls? I had been procrastinating for over two weeks now, coming up with excuse after excuse as to why I should put it off until the next day.

Well, with a little self-probing I realized that it wasn’t making the phone calls that was posing the problem, but making the phone calls with my husband within earshot. I was fearing his judgment or criticism of me and my ability to call up strangers to book an interview. No wait, take it a step further, I was afraid he would think that I am not as competent as I always lead him to believe. I wanted to make the calls when he wasn’t around, so that if I said something “stupid”, he wouldn’t know about it and couldn’t criticize me. So really, I was fearing being criticized by someone who I really respect and value their opinion. Read more

The art of living worry-free

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened”
— Winston Churchill

I just finished writing to my step-daughter about worrying. She is in the middle of a worry-fest and I needed to help her release her fears around the situation. Why?

First because she doesn’t even know what she is dealing with, and therefore she is expending a lot of energy on something that she can’t even put a real name to, let alone do anything about right now. Secondly, because she is such a busy person that it is a complete waste of her time to focus any of her thoughts into such an unknown territory. As this anonymous quote points out well, “Worry is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” And she has plenty of better things to do and bigger places to go.

So my advice for those who fall into the common habit of worry; keep living and solve the issues when they come up, because if they aren’t real enough to fix right now, they may not exist at all.

In the news…

“For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.”
— Gloria Borger

Turn on the TV and watch the news and what will you see? Most likely you will get a recap of the days violence in your city and around the world. OK, now read the paper. What do you get there? More violence, fraud, and negativity most likely, focusing primarily on informing us of things to fear in life.

It’s no wonder that with all these negative images and stories that we find ourselves focusing on the negative things in our lives as well. This also can help to escalate the fear-based reactions in our day to day living.

What if we were to focus on not only surrounding ourselves with positive people, but positive news as well? Imagine we would celebrate together as a society all the good things that are happening in our city and around the world. Maybe we would be building up the positive energy in our minds to the point where it would be spreading faster than the negative energy?

Spread the positive energy by surrounding yourself with happy news and stories. And then tell others of these happy events as well. Here’s a web site with just happy news for your fun and enjoyment: Happy News

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