Recently at a lecture I attended, the speaker relayed the following story from her life: A six year old girl was asked, “Pretend you were in a room full of scary tigers. What would you do?” The little girl paused for a long moment and then responded, “Well … I’d just stop pretending.” 

Ah, the power of the mind. Just as it can conjure the scariest of scenarios, so too can it release them. Hold that thought for just a minute or two while you read on. What I want to chat with you about are the three wicked step sisters, Fear, Doubt and Worry (well, that’s a little dramatic but I think you get the point) and how to change the way you relate to them. 

To set the stage, a little gift from the poet Rumi entitled, “The Guest House:” This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice - meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

The premise: We all deal with fears of one kind or another but most of us haven’t a clue what to do with them or how to be with them. Mostly we employ the strategy of fight or flight. When we feel a worry, a concern, a doubt or a fear, we either go to battle with it or run for the hills (how’s that working out for you?).  BUT alas, there is another way. There is a way to be with the heavier side of our emotional selves; a relationship that redefines what it means to be the glorious feeling being that you are.  Read more…

“Feelings, whoa, whoa, whoa feelings” as the song goes. I’m not sure most of us have the slightest clue what to do or how to be with these things that seem to surface within us at the most opportune and inopportune times. Like star crossed lovers, running towards each other across a field of wildflowers, feelings can sweep us up and spinning us around, turn the most bland of moments into a blissful, thrilling wondrous experience. Or perhaps they might pull us in close, hold us sweetly in their embrace cooing us into quietness and tranquility. But that’s on a good day. Because in a moment they can turn. We might go to bed feeling centered, strong and optimistic and awaken only to find that the forgotten dwarfs, Cranky, Disgruntled and Guilty have set up camp at the foot of our bed. (“Who invited them, anyway?”) Indeed this world of feelings can be a perplexing one, one that leaves us scratching our heads and feeling powerless especially if we have drank the Kool-Aid that says we’re supposed to live in an inner world reigned over by feelings of happiness and joy (I for one, drank that particular flavor of Kool-Aid and have been dealing with the results for most of my adult life). Read more…

Fear. You can make it BIG or you can make it small. You can wrap yourself in it letting it suffocate you or plant flowers in the holes of each letter making it the fertilizer for your dreams. You can bury it hoping it will never rise again (oh and, this rarely works by the way. It’s sort of like one of those monsters in a scary movie that never, ever, ever dies. Ever.) or you can turn, look at it square in the eye and mess up its hair. You can dance with it or let it run your life, allow it to close you down or open you up so wide that the very Milky Way feels miniscule inside. You can use it as a signpost marking the important decisions in your life; always pointing you in the right direction. You can make it a trusted confidant calling it in close to you so that you can harness its energy. Know this: Fear is there for you. It is there for you. Decide how to use it … but one thing you can count on, Fear is a certain part of the mix. So you might as well get to know it. You might as well choose the kind of relationship you want to have with it. If you don’t … it will. And most of the time, it will choose the most obvious one; the one that shuts you down, that closes every door inside of you; the one that makes you feel small and frozen and incapable. That’s Fear’s nature at least when it goes unattended and unchecked. That’s not necessarily what it is intended for but like an unruly child, when Fear is left to its own devices, it tends to go a little bonkers.

 The one thing Fear does well is get your attention.

 Let it.

 Then you decide…

What to do next.

This morning I awoke grappling with fear.  Ugh.  I could feel it in my chest and in my head.  I wasn’t conscious of it as much as I was simply in it.  In this early morning state of mind; I was all wrapped up in my fear.  It was me, I was it.  My chest was tight, my head occupied with fear’s narrative.  And though this fear was attached to a specific situation in my life, it was functioning as a lens through which I was now seeing the entirety of my day. It weighed me down and made everything seem scary and a bit unhinged.   

Then in a flash, I understood something I’d never understood before.  This fear, the one telling me “Be careful. Don’t get too invested. You’re  gunna get hurt.” was actually trying to protect me.  In an instant upon this recognition, the grip fear had on my morning loosened a smidge.  It’s as if there was the tiniest opening that hadn’t been there only a moment before.  In that moment, as I was making the coffee, some impulse had me listen beyond the suffocating narrative I was caught in and I understood for the first time, that my fear had assigned itself to be my protector.  I think I actually smiled.  I became conscious of my fear; listened, got its intended message and it relaxed a bit.  I was no longer my fear.  My fear was no longer me.  Read more…