One of the hardest things for me to deal with in life is the things I can't control. When I can't see how something is going to work out, or I feel like I want to change another person's behavior, or I simply feel nervous about a million little things, I feel my whole body tighten with anxiety.
Comments
Let's play a little game of imagination.
I want you to imagine that everything you think is said back to you by... You. This other You isn't standing in front of you. This other Self, rather, is out in the Universe. You might picture this You as up in the sky, or up in the stars, or just as a big You floating above Earth. Now I want you to consider phrases you generally think in your daily life. Specifically, phrases related to your pursuit of goals, a relationship and your well being. For example, when thinking about your goals you may often think to yourself, How will I get this? And now this you that's out there, with complete conviction sends this right back to you "HOW WILL I GET THIS?" So let's say I'm thinking about my screenplays, which I love to write and often try to figure out how to get them sold. I think to myself, "How can I sell my work?" And Me, out in the Universe, with full force sends back, "HOW CAN I SELL MY WORK?" Now as you can imagine, this You that's out there is the Universe responding back to you. The Universe is always - always - reflecting back to you what you put out. And this You that's out there is connected to everyone and everything else. But wait - I don't want the Universe to be asking me how to sell my work! I'm asking the Universe, and I want it to send back the answers. So in order to get the Universe to send back, "I know what to do," then I must think that? But I don't know what to do! But... but... but... Deep breath. It's okay. The Universe absolutely can show you what to do, one step after another, but only when you learn how to engage its magic. If you want the Universe to work for you then you have to put out there, "I know what I'm doing." Or even better, as Wayne Dyer says in the book I'm now reading, "There's a divine solution to every problem." Or perhaps better still, "I have everything I need. All my needs are taken care of." I know how difficult it can be to project "All of my needs are taken care of," when we look around and see that is not the case. It feels reckless and immature and foolhardy. It can feel as if it's a waste of time, and we need to buckle up and get serious and ask over and over, "What do I do now? How can I make this work? Who should I call?" This feeling of lack, or even perhaps desperation, gets reflected back to us by everyone and everything, because all is One. So the more we feed into our worries and try to resolve them from the mind level the more people and circumstances show up to affirm to us that Yes, things are bad, and you should be freaking out! To have the whole world conspiring to show you why you should be afraid is really intense. But... to have the world, the whole Universe really, conspiring to show you how you're taken care of and how loved you are is equally intense, but in a positive and sometimes even euphoric way. Feeding into our worries by focusing on them and trying to figure them out feels so natural the idea of shifting to a new way of being and doing may feel impossible. It may feel like there isn't even a choice. But you are a being with free will, and you are always at choice. So the next time you want to begin asking, "How can I get more money?" just try, just for a few minutes, to sit with something else. Close your eyes and quietly repeat to yourself, I have more money than I need. Then imagine that being reflected back to you by You. Imagine that You out in the Universe is sending this message, "I have more money than I need" out to everything. And everything is receiving this message and sending back all the money in the world, because that's what you've aligned with. This isn't something that should be an immediate shift into, oh, wow, I get it, I will never again worry or ask how to make something happen! Putting that kind of pressure on it won't allow you to grow and evolve into this new way of being. It's a process of daily shifts, of catching yourself when you're projecting the fear, and then imagining the whole Universe reflecting back to you that fear, reminding you of how powerful you are. Each time you stop and shift, you shift your power in a positive direction. And so now, what is it you want the Universe to be flowing to you through every person, plant, bee, star and speck of dust? If you don't know, you can always go with All is Well, the easy button phrase that takes care of everything. The other week I had put something out that I expected to workout and come back to me on a certain day.
Leading up to that day, I had visualized it all working out. I energized my desire with positive intentions, good feelings and an inner alignment with YES, this will succeed! As the day neared, I decided the best way to keep the positive momentum going was to go to the float spa and hot yoga. I had it all figured out, I felt like I was finally working with my inner power, that power that comes from creating from the quantum field, from the energetic field of potentials. Before, I had always forcibly tried to make things happen in my own way and my own time. But now I was getting it! Good vibes! Daily visualizations! Meditations! And... cue the magic! When the day arrived I woke up with a feeling of tension. This should've been my first sign I had attached to an outcome and I was not in a state of allowing. I was in a state of controlling. But I had done my visualizing, I had felt good, so who cares! I got this. And then... nothing happened. It didn't work out how I'd planned. As the days went on and I continued to get crickets the tension in me rose. I started to feel frustrated with everything. That damn song in the gym was REALLY annoying me. And why is it so LOUD in here??? As these feelings rose up I knew it was time to put my money where my mouth is. If I really believe my thoughts and feelings are powerful then I had best not let these negative feelings take over. Each time a feeling of irritation came over I repeated to myself, "These feelings don't help." Each time I judged someone because their behavior was causing me more frustration I again reminded myself, "These feelings don't help." And when I felt myself starting to doubt, to slide into the fear, I said, "This feels familiar, you think it's natural to feed the fear, like it's somehow rational, but don't do it! It doesn't help." This is a far cry from how I used to handle things. Before, whenever I'd have negative feelings I would feed into them, feeling the need to validate them and why things were not good. I would tell other people how I felt, and in their positive intention to be there for me, we'd usually end up reinforcing how I felt and why I felt that way. I never stopped to ask myself what I wanted to feel instead. I knew that rejecting negative feelings made things worse, but I couldn't get past the part where I accepted how I felt. I would get stuck there. It was as if my car got a flat tire and I stopped and acknowledged the flat. But rather than asking what I would do about it, and how I would get going again, I just stood there staring at it, repeating to myself, "I have a flat tire, I have a flat tire, I have a flat tire." This would only attract more negative experiences to me, which would cause me to cry out, "Why isn't this working!? What am I doing wrong!? Does the Universe not care about me? Has God forgotten me? HellooooOOOOoooo? Is this thing on!??!?!" The more I spiraled down, wallowing in my own feelings, the more I would surround myself with them and see them as evidence that things just don't work out. I would go down and down and down until it broke, and I would cry and surrender it all through meditation and yoga. This somehow felt like I was doing it right, because meditation and yoga are healthy ways to deal with stress, right? It never even occurred to me that rather than continually cycling through a state of despair and recovery I could actually halt the process, change course and nurture prevention and inner faith instead. Resisting the slide down became a battle waging within me. All the while, a part of me was whispering, "Just give in. Be angry. Be sad. Be pissed at the world. You'll feel so much better." But I couldn't give in, even as it began to make me physically tired. I was going to bed early, struggling to get up in the morning and laying down in the middle of the day. Giving in and letting the wave of negativity come over me felt so easy, but I knew in the long run, it would cost me so much more. As the week ended I felt the dam breaking within me. Each morning for the past several weeks I've done Kundalini yoga. As I prepared to do my Kundalini I felt that moment of wanting to cry, to shed the tears, and I did. But unlike before, I didn't feel broken and lost. I felt a sense of release. After, I was still lingering in the dark place. I still felt uncertain and like I could fall backwards at any moment. And that's when I really got tired of my own bullshit and wanted to shout it down. I'm all for self love and loving kindness, but sometimes the most loving thing we can do for ourselves is to let that voice that wants to make us feel sad, afraid and lost know it's not in charge. Behind the voice that tells us we're alone and forgotten is another voice, and this is the one I wanted to energize. This voice tells me to have faith in the unknown. It tells me how eternally loved I am. It tells me to breathe and allow myself to be surprised by love and coincidence. It's the voice that usually whispers, but on this day, it was done with that shit. As I prepared to face down those feelings again my resolve strengthened. I wasn't giving in this time. That's when I finally allowed myself to stop being a victim of my own feelings. That's when I chose to create something different. The voice rose up and shouted over these feelings, I CHOOSE NOT TO BE OVER TAKEN BY THESE FEELINGS! As I did this I was amazed that I could do it. It had always felt like once the negative feelings swept in, I just had to ride that river current. But now I can see I'm not just riding the river, I AM the river. With enough determination, I can change the course of that river. I can shift those negative feelings and put something new in place. I can actually choose to be calm even when there is evidence presenting that I should freak out, despair and shake my fist in frustration. And if I can choose to be calm, no matter what, then I can continually choose a vibration that will lead to the things that make me happy, excited and alive with a sense of connection. As a Course in Miracles says, "I can choose peace, rather than this." As this settled into me, and I continued to let that strong, forceful voice run forth, I felt myself shifting. I felt the darkness lifting. I was tuning into those good, positive feelings I had had before I'd lost control of myself, and even better, they were coming up naturally. The best part was, because I hadn't allowed my own feelings to overtake me, I felt a new sense of empowerment rising up within me. It was something I had always felt was possible, but could never reach. It's that place where I change my feelings in the moment. It's the part of me that knows that true empowerment isn't about other people. It's about knowing I can control my feelings, and if I can control my feelings, I can keep from getting lost in fear, insecurity and anger. As I got into this newly empowered state I began to get more clear on everything. I reminded myself that just because things aren't happening now doesn't mean they won't. If I look for evidence of future magic in what's already here then I'm just shooting myself in the foot. What's here now is old news. What's coming - and something new always comes, change is inevitable - is what matters. Looking out and falling into despair really does lead to something to despair about. But if I can choose, with all my might, not to be overtaken by own feelings, then I can get back to the trust, to the allowing and best of all, to the freedom of knowing everything is working out for me, in its own divine way and better than I imagined it would. This is an article I originally wrote for Tiny Buddha. It was republished with permission from tinybuddha.com. You can find the original post here. When it comes to facing fear and moving past it in order to see my dreams realized, I was always advised to power through it. Do the thing that scares you, no matter how much it makes your heart pound. Take that step that makes your stomach knot up in tight balls. Do it, and power through, or else miss out on life. For a long time, I felt these were my only two options. I could either have moments of crippling fear as I chased what I wanted, or I could feel like life was passing me by as I let my passions die. One of my passions is writing screenplays, and so I continually did what I thought I should do in order to become a successful screenwriter. I called people who gave me anxiety. I put my work out to places I felt I wasn’t ready for. With each step I took, I hoped and prayed I would get more comfortable. I couldn’t live with the constant fear I was feeling, and yet no amount of powering through was making it go away. It was in fact growing, because it felt like I had no control over it. The fear was getting larger than my dreams, and I became exhausted and eventually burned out. I had no choice then but to take time to pause and reflect. When I did, I could see the counter-productive patterns I was engaging in. I was forcing myself to do things that brought me angst rather than joy. The advice to power through had turned me into a bully toward myself. Because I wasn’t doing the kind of behavior I normally associate with being self-destructive, such as constantly criticizing myself, I didn’t see my actions as being hurtful. In fact, I saw them as honoring my journey because I was chasing my biggest goals. However, when the dust settled and I stepped back, it was very clear that by powering forward, I had left behind a crucial thing: self-love. I wasn’t listening to myself. Because our inner world is always mirrored back to us, I always had the frustrating feeling that people weren’t listening to me. Instead of hearing my great ideas, they would hear the shake in my voice. They would hear me rambling on because I was too nervous to be clear and concise, and they would tune out, ending the call as I would slump down in my chair, knowing I’d blown it. Compounding this is the fact that I also wasn’t treating myself as an important person. I wasn’t honoring that the fear and anxiety was taking a toll. This too was mirrored back in the fact that people forgot me as soon as we connected. I never got any follow-up calls after my initial pitches, which only fed into my fears more. The momentum I had going was certainly powering me onward, but in the opposite direction of what I wanted. Once I could see the patterns, the solution was obvious. The old adage “what you resist persists” repeated in my mind. I had to first of all accept that I was living from a place of fear. I allowed myself to acknowledge that I didn’t like being afraid all the time. This swept through me in a wave of relief, and I felt free to choose what I wanted rather than what I felt I was supposed to do. I began cultivating and prioritizing self-love. The more I slowed down, took time to ask myself if I was okay, and returned to my meditation practice, the easier things got. What began to reflect back to me were my new feelings—that I’m important and what I do is important. As I went through this process, I was able to stop fearing fear itself. This too helped me to reverse my momentum even further, because I was open to receiving new information. I learned how fear begins in my brain and body. Once I understood how it worked, it wasn’t this huge, abstract, and uncontrollable thing. Fear begins in a place in the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala processes a situation and decides if it’s safe or if you need to get scared and run away. If it decides something’s not safe hormones are released in order to get your body moving and prepare you for fight or flight. Attached to the amygdala is the hippocampus, which is where your memories are stored. These two things work together. The amygdala looks at old memories as a way of assessing a current situation. This process is meant to be helpful, but when we’re not aware of it, it can run amok and become hurtful. As an example from my own life, one bad phone call with a potential agent had been stored in my memories. From that point onward, when I went to call someone with a pitch, my amygdala would access that memory and immediately label all related phone calls as bad, which steamrolled as I would get more anxious, have more bad phone calls, and dread any interaction. This was my brain trying to protect me by ensuring I wouldn’t engage in something that might cause me harm or emotional pain. Understanding this about my body and how I process things gave me a huge amount of self-power back. It was reassuring first of all to know I wasn’t trying to subconsciously sabotage myself, but to instead keep myself safe. It was also reassuring to know where this started, because once I was aware of the root of it, I could begin untangling myself from it. The more I began to see fear as something I could manage, the more I felt I could work with the fear rather than trying to power through it. It was then that I began to feel that thing I’d yearned for but felt was impossible to reach—excitement. I remembered why I’d started writing in the first place. I felt excitement to share my stories and see them made into films. I felt excitement about contacting people who were passionate about film also. I remembered how good it was to feel excited about talking to people rather than fearful. From this new, more self-love based place, I started contacting people again. I listened to my inner voice, and if something made me feel fear, I would stop. I would tune in, breathe, and ask myself if I was attaching old, unrelated memories, or if it really was my intuition trying to tell me something was amiss. I’m happy to say people are requesting my scripts again, and I’m now enjoying pursuing my passions more than ever. I wake up excited rather than with dread. I take steps and go for things, as I did before, but without feeling like I’m stretching a rubber band that’s about to snap. If you’re also paralyzing yourself with fear, see what happens when you put self-love first. When you believe that you’re worth listening to, and show up confident, without an energy of desperation, people will be far more interested in what you have to say. And when you feel your fear creeping back in, instead of ignoring it and pushing through it, step back, breathe, and remember that your own mind and body have created it to help you. When you realize it’s not some big, monstrous force that shows up without your consent—that you’ve created it to keep yourself safe—you can learn to let it go. As someone who started a website about meditation, spirituality and positive self development, I sometimes feel as if that makes it seem like I have positive thoughts and feelings all the time. But the truth is, I started this website, and I keep it going, because I need this as much as anyone else. My biggest sources of worry, fear and pessimism have always been around my writing. I have been putting my writing out the world for several years now, with the intention that it be more than a hobby and something I actually get to call a career. In my path to actualizing my dream, I hit a lot of roadblocks. Rejection. Criticism. Self-doubt. FEAR. When any or all of this comes up, I used to have the knee jerk reaction of either burying the feelings or downing in them. I would feel it come over me like a wave, consuming me until I would eventually drag myself back out through meditation, yoga and long walks. Or, I would completely block it, which means I just buried it, waiting for it to rise up and really knock me on my ass when something (usually small) triggered it in me. These days, I am practicing something much different. I find it to be very effective, but because it's so foreign, I really have to keep at it, reprogramming this to be my new normal. Now, when those feelings of darkness come up, I think to myself, 'These feelings are natural. They're nothing to be afraid of.' Then I sit with them and I do... nothing. I don't argue with them. I don't ask them to leave. I just sit with them and remind myself that these feelings came from me, and if I made them, I did so for a reason. If I feel sad it's because something made me feel wounded. If I feel angry it's because something made me feel powerless. If I feel insecure it's because something made me forget who and what I really am. And then I start to see the feelings not as my enemy, but as a partner guiding me, in a very intense and immediate way, back to the path of love. This approach, which I would call accept and neutralize, is counter-intuitive to what my knee jerk reaction is. When I insta-react I either reject the feelings or blow them up until they're all I can see. Accepting and neutralizing doesn't immediately resolve what I'm feeling. But it lessens the intensity, and that is enough that I don't have to hide the feelings or get overwhelmed by them. Once I'm no longer clinging to the darkness out of some fear that I'm actually safer that way, then they start to dissipate and show me why they arose. It's almost magical in how effective it is. But - and this is a big but - it takes patience and trust. I'm not always patient. And I'm not always trusting. But I'm learning. I have to be patient that the feelings will pass, and they always do, and trust that something better is behind them. Sometimes it takes a few hours for them to flow through me. Sometimes a day. The key word here is flow. That's all feelings are. They're emotions in motion. Let them flow, and trust you are always bigger than your darkest feelings. No matter how big they seem, the love and light inside of you is, at all times, the biggest and most powerful part of you. It's okay to feel sad. It's okay to feel afraid. The sooner we accept that these so-called dark feelings are not only normal, but a natural part of us, the sooner we will feel whole, at ease and empowered. Next time something happens that really makes you want to breakdown, just try to step back, look at it and think, 'These feelings are natural. They're nothing to be afraid of.' And they are natural. A range of emotions and reactions to all of life's colorful aspects isn't just healthy for us. It's a part of who we are, as feeling and perceptive beings. I find this easiest to do when I combine it with a walk. Moving my body helps to remind me things are always moving within me, even if I can't see it right away. I walk slow, notice the trees, breathe deep, and step back from the intense feelings, gently repeating, These feelings are natural. They're nothing to be afraid of. If it feels like you're in those feelings all the time, for extended periods and it's all you know anymore, you can still neutralize them and find your way back to the light. It's just going to take some outside help, and it might be time to consider talking to a therapist or somebody who can help you to understand what's happening. This is also natural. I've been there, and I can say that asking for help has saved me more times than I can count. Whatever it is that feels right for you, just know you're not alone. We all need help at times, we are all works in progress, and we're all in this together. I have been working through this fear, and I know it's a fear a lot of people struggle with. It's the fear of putting my work, my creations, my passions out to the world, and then realizing I did not make the world a better place. This is a fear I face from both an artistic and an entrepreneurial standpoint. I know that other artists feel this fear. Those that create a business, a dream from within of what they know is their unique gift, they share in this fear too. In our hearts, we all want to believe that our creations will add color to the spectrum of life. We hope that our work sparks something in other people. Something that might start a conversation that needs to be had. Something that lights a fire in someone else, a person who was experiencing their own inner fire dimming of life. Something that wasn't there before, and because we breathed life into it, it has spread wings and flown right where it was supposed to. We hope and we pray that what we create will enrich the world. That it reaches people and they think, Yes... thank you. That's exactly what I needed. But deep down, I am always fearful that what I create will be more of a dark stain. It's the fear that says I won't get it right, I'll upset people, I'll even hurt people by sharing something that sounded good to me, but came across more like I let my dog take a shit in their yard. I know I shouldn't compare my work to dog shit. But sometimes I do. Telling myself over and over to believe in myself and think positive can get frustrating. Downright annoying when it's not helping. And really, truly, when I'm feeling alone and lost, it just pisses me off. It makes me feel the energy within me closing down, the doors of my inner world slamming shut, as I wrestle with this doubt and fear. Instead of repeating what hasn't worked, which is the repeating of, "I am good, I am worthy," I have begun working on a new way to work through this fear. And I know I will work through it. I know because I have made a choice to, and I know that's all life is. Choices. One after another. I choose to feel this fear. I choose to acknowledge it's here. I choose to look at this fear and say hello. I choose to to look at this fear and say goodbye. Goodbye fear. I chose to create you, for many reasons that seemed logical at the time. And now I choose to release you. What I choose to focus on instead is the love. Hello Love. I've missed you. I choose to hold you so tight now you and I become one, and you're all I know. It always comes back to this. To choosing the love over the fear. When the fear is taking over, I remind myself that behind every desire and intention I have is love. I am not trying to create from a place of anger or hate. When I envision one of my screenplays being made into a movie, I feel excitement for the actors and hope that the patrons enjoy the movie. I don't create these visions with the intention that my vision destroy someone else's life. And yet, this is the kind of fear that seeps in. I begin to wonder, what if my script is made, and the movie bombs? What if I ruin someone's career? What if people lose a lot of money on my idea? What if people feel they wasted their time seeing my terrible movie? What if I - And then I stop myself. I stop and refuse to let this train chug even an inch further. I stop, I breathe, and I remind myself, my intentions come from a place of love. First of all, because I am love. If I am love, if I am created from the same Universe that I pray to every night, the Universe that I believe with my whole being is an infinite source of love, then how could I ever dream something up that isn't, at it's core, love? I AM LOVE. Love is powerful. If love is behind everything I do, then all of my worries really are unfounded. All I'm sharing is love. All I'm doing is adding more love to the world. It's just little ole me reaching into myself, to my divine inspiration, my connection to my higher self, and pulling back things I flow into the world. Which is actually kind of amazing. Love is the bird soaring with ease and grace through the sky. Love is the sunset that reminds you how beautiful this world is. Love is the feeling of expansion. Freedom. Happiness. Love is everything good, and if love is good, then what I create, no matter how it's received by other people, is and always will be good. There is no need to fear my creations and dreams. They are love. I am love. You are love. We're all love, and it's all good. |