Love nurtures our soul. It nurtures our spirit. Plain and simple. Love connects us to others by way of energy. Love is the means in which we survive and grow.
Fear is the flip-side of love. Both love and fear are integral for us to survive, but sometimes we linger too much in fear when we should be in love. For instance, we need fear to some degree – fear gives us a smack to avoid dangers. Remaining in that fear is not good. It is not healthy. In fact, when fear becomes an obsession or it overwhelms us, we experience irrational behavior, hate, jealousy, pain, anger, and more fear. Sometimes fear gets a tight hold over us and controls us. This is not healthy in any way.
So if you get bitten by a dog, for instance, you may be fearful the next time you see a dog. That is normal. The way you react next is your pivotal point. Healthy fear in this case would that immediate STOP sign in your mind’s eye signaling a caution to yourself that a dog is near. Letting that fear grip you and dictate responses is not healthy. Screaming, crying, running, hiding behind someone when you see a dog, fear of all dogs everywhere and always, avoiding friends who have dogs – this is unhealthy fear taking control.
Now if, when you see a dog, you stop, breathe, and take a moment to push fear aside, you will see that all dogs aren’t out to hurt you. Changing body posture, relaxing, and allowing yourself to see this as a new situation and an opportunity to change your fears – is healthy.
Of course this is a pretty dramatic example of unhealthy fear, but it will put into context for you the less dramatic fears that you succumb to.
Many of us react to situations out of fear from something that happened in the past. That is where we have fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of looking stupid, fear of what others think, fear of taking a risk, fear of a broken heart, etc. Not unlike the fear of the dog scenario, these are irrational fears and are where most of us find our ability-to-love problems. Internally we cry, scream, avoid, and, like the dog scenario above, we hide behind our fear to avoid facing the reality of the situation.
Picture two camps: one is fear, one is love. We automatically run to the fear-camp because somehow it’s easier to feel fear (avoid) rather than face our fears and love. Which is so silly because fear itself makes our heart race, we get nervous, sick, crabby, angry, defensive, and negative.
This is where our self-work comes into play.
In talking about love here, I am not talking about physical love (romantic love), I am speaking to love in general as a whole, as our innate emotion and our reason for life itself. When people are asked to describe how love makes them feel, they say “warm and fuzzy” or cozy. How does love make YOU feel?
In order to get your fearful self over to the love-camp, you have to learn to be loving again. I say again, because as a child you saw the world through loving eyes and you will again. Most of it is removing the word cynical from your thoughts. It is not looking to past pain to form your present-moment thoughts. It is taking the junk from the past and planting something beautiful in its place.
Dealing with Fear:
The fear-camp (jealousy, anger, resentment, negative things) is just remembered pain. These are things that are literally STUCK in your subconscious. When you fail to deal with your issues in the past, it revisits you again at later dates.
Let yourself feel your emotions. Feel where they are at – in the body – when you recall the episode or circumstance that created that pain or fear. Remember what happened. Label it, define how it makes you feel and what it prohibits you from doing going forward.
Allow your anger, tears, or sadness. Experience it and grieve. Write it down or speak it as your form of expression. Once you do these things you are opening the gate of your subconscious, letting it out, setting it free. Sometimes you need to give it an additional push to get it to leave, but push as often as you need to and send it on its way.
Take with you ONLY the things that are going to help you, not the things that enable you to stay fixated in pain. Ask yourself if these emotions are healthy, if you need them anymore. I bet the answer is no.
Ways to look at life more lovingly:
Listen. Really listen. Part of loving is listening. When someone is talking to you, remain quiet and let them speak. Only offer opinion if it is requested from them. Otherwise just wait and let them finish speaking. Listen with an open heart and no judgments. After all, this is how you wish people to listen you. Sometimes people don’t need you to fix things for them, or solve their problems, they just want you to listen. Oftentimes the mere act of being able to talk something out, brings an epiphany or solution to their own problem.
Enjoy nature. One of the best ways to open your heart and experience true love is to just immerse yourself in nature. Let it fill your senses and allow the experience to wash away (even if just for a bit) the dramas and dilemmas of everyday life. Once you learn that you can step outside of these things and not have to wallow in them, it becomes easier and easier to find that mental break as time goes on. You will discover you have a CHOICE in where you wish to bunk down with your thoughts, either in fear or in love.
Be compassionate and kind. You know, this doesn’t take hardly any effort at all, and it really doesn’t have to cost a penny! Make a conscious effort every day to smile at someone. Whether you are out on a walk, shopping, at the bank, wherever you are – smile at someone, wish them a good day, or hold the door open for someone. When you make kindness and compassion a daily ritual, it becomes a habit and a way of life. Only good can come from kindness and compassion.
What are you projecting? You need to come to terms with the things you are dealing with now in order to move forward. Life is watching you, and the thoughts you project are attracting more of the same to you. So guess what? If you are projecting out how unfair, unjust, sucky, or hard life is… you’re gonna get more of the same. Your thoughts are like praying. So if you are always putting out negative thoughts, it’s like praying for stuff you really don’t want any more of.
Instead of projecting all that is wrong with your life, try projecting what is RIGHT. Project feelings of happiness and love. Project kindness and compassion. Watch how life changes when you focus on the love-camp rather than the fear-camp. You will attract more love.
Be thankful. Start the day with being thankful for what you have at that very moment rather than waking up and wishing you had a different set of circumstances. One of the most important aspects of a loving heart is being grateful for whatever you have NOW. Not what you want or wish for, not what you had or never had, but what you HAVE in this moment. Maybe it’s not your ideal but it’s yours right now none-the-less and you need to make the most of it before you are extended something different. It is part of your path, you can’t just skip over the hard parts.
