Tag: Fear

You Are Beautiful As You Are

A friend of mind has been struggling recently with her body image. She says she feels a lot of shame when she looks in the mirror, and the stories in her mind keep on trying to convince her there is something wrong with her at her present weight. She is caught in the land of fear, where her mind keeps telling her stories that she is not skinny enough, pretty enough or sexy enough. In other words, she is not enough, period! Our western society basically deems women’s bodies unacceptable unless they are a size 2 or less. Just take…

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Welcome Yourself Exactly As You Are

Welcoming means accepting yourself exactly as you are and also accepting life exactly as it unfolds. It is the ability to allow all of it, including all the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, and letting it all flow without getting hooked into the stories created by your mind. Welcoming is not trying to make your life any different than it is.  Easier said than done, right? I know it's not always easy to welcome and accept life, especially your challenges, because you have been conditioned to continuously judge yourself and others. This is the inner voice…

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How You can Find Healing that Lasts

How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…

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How You can Embrace Change

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.” -  Charles Darwin So many people have a fear of change: changing jobs, changing relationships, changing cell phones, changing lanes…. The good news is, we are all born with only two fears: the fear of falling, and the fear of loud noises. These are quite obviously for our protection. That being said, all the other fears are learned. And whatever is learned, can be un-learned. Thus, we all learned (were taught) how to be afraid of aging, of riding a bike,…

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Allow Kindness to Heal Your Struggling Self

With the return of my son’s cancer, I have had lots of opportunities to be with fear and despair.   Sharing this journey with my son has taken me to a deeper level of presence than I have ever known. My body has been a very dear friend throughout this fierce process, especially my belly and my breath. Whenever I am caught in the fear-based mind, sometimes all I can do is soften my belly and allow a deeper breath. The belly is one of the best biofeedback mechanisms we have.  If it is tight, we are up in our…

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How To Use The Mantra, “Just This Much”

If you watch your mind, you will see that it goes into the past or future all day long.  It especially loves to go into the future and when it really gets activated, it moves from a whole different place.  It will convince you that that you can’t do it right, or you can’t do it at all, or something bad is going to happen, and the thoughts go on and on.   These thoughts are just not true because we don’t know what is going to happen.  All we have is this present moment, but you can begin to see…

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5 Simple Techniques to Get Unstuck

It happens to each one of us at one time or another. We become stuck. We enter a state of lethargy. Whether it involves our work or our home life, there are just days (and unfortunately sometimes weeks and months) where we feel stuck. We don’t seem to have the energy to move forward. We feel the need to get things done but can’t find a grain of momentum to make it happen. After a while we know we have to do something, yet we sit on the couch like an immobile brick. Stuck. When this happens, remember that feeling…

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How to Honor Your Survival System

We all created a finely-crafted survival system to bury or numb our pain when we were young.  We had to, as it was absolutely necessary for survival.  Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, work, sex, the Internet, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry.  I think about all of those years that I shut down the pain with food, drugs and alcohol.  In one year alone, I gained 97 pounds.  I would have died of the pain if I…

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How To Let Your Brilliant Being Shine

I recently came across one of my favorite poems, My Brilliant Image, by the fourteenth century Persian Poet, Hafiz: One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence That has cast my brilliant image! I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The astonishing Light Of your own Being! Hafiz is telling us that the astonishing light, the brilliance of our own being, is already with us.  We are filled with great light that permeates everything.    Brian Swimme, Evolutionary Philosopher and Co-Collaborator of the documentary…

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Find and Stand In Your Truth

Take a long look in the closest mirror.  Look up, look down.  Notice what you are thinking and how you are feeling in doing so. Then, ask yourself... Do you recognize that person? Is your external being a true reflection of the soul on the inside? Do you bear slight resemblance to the face in the mirror, or are you identical twins?  Are you happy with that person?  Are there things you notice you want to change? What is the chatter going on in your mind and heart right now? Often in life, the face we put forward in the…

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to-do list, checklist

Safety Checklist

Recently a client admitted to falling back into an old undesirable habit. Ashley had once again become a tyrant at home. She was obsessed with the cleanliness of her house. She worried about getting things done on time. She stopped interacting with her family. The only time she spoke to them was when she was barking out an order or reprimanding when something was not done correctly or on time. Ashley was obsessed with her to-do list. She was frantic to complete each item. She was becoming very stressed by all she wanted to complete. The first thing I told…

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Why Are You Reluctant to Stop Doing It All?

When the behaviors of a Type A are out of control, we can take responsibility for situations and outcomes, for the feelings and experience or others, and for absolutely everything around us. We think everything is our responsibility, and thus, within our control to affect. We fear if we don’t take care of everything needing to get done, there will be horrible consequences. The stress coming from being overtaken by our Type-A tendencies, eventually takes a toll on our mood, mental clarity, relationships, work satisfaction, and our health. The goal of this book is to help reduce these negative side effects of…

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Change Your Focus – Change Your Experience

I recently had the honor of interviewing Neil Findlay on The Empowerment Show. In his episode, we discussed his charity work. He helps children living on the street in Madagascar who may be as young as five years old. No resources. No education. No future. A situation he could only describe as hopelessness.  He also works with teens in Australia who often turn to drugs and alcohol due to their family situations. The teens have access to everything - food, shelter, education, and technology - yet there the suicide rate is rising. Suicide is rare in Madagascar where living conditions are…

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You Are Not Your Results

I like to think I was a control freak, but I guess I still am. Back in the old day I was a micromanager, taking responsibility for every aspect of a project even if it wasn’t mine. I would stay awake at night worrying about outcome. I would plan and scheme what else I could do to make the project work. Fortunately, for the most part, I have released much of those tendencies. My next challenge is releasing my focus on outcome for things that define success for me. Many a sage says to release the outcome. It is about the journey not the…

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Ask a Luminary

How Can I Overcome My Fears?

"From the time I was a child, I've lived my life in fear. What if I lose my job? What if I can't pay the rent? What if I never find a wife? And so on... I'd greatly appreciate any insight on how I can let go of the fear and actually LIVE my life!" ~ Tim, Minneapolis, MN Dear Tim, As humans, we all deal with fear in one form or another. However, we can only focus on one thing at a time, so chose to focus on your dreams rather than the fear. In other words, focus on what you…

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Don’t Believe Your Fears

I like to think I am fearless, and in many ways I am. But in some ways I am not. One of the most noticeable ways is in regards to my business. I fear not having enough income to pay my bills. I fear I will not be able to make the business what I want it to be. I fear that I made a mistake making my passion and purpose my business. The problem is when I listen to my fears and believe them, I make bad choices. If I believe I won’t have sufficient income, I feel it…

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Your Triumph Over Discontentment

Discontentment is a kind of psychic echo. In fact, whatever the unhappiness may be, it is only an inner echo that is "sounding" within us. As difficult as it may be to understand this at the present time, suffering only seems real. It has no real life. How is this possible? Our inner stress, strain, and pain feel real to us, for sure; but then, so do all of the fears we feel in the middle of a nightmare. But where is the terror once we wake up? It doesn't exist anymore because it was only real as long as…

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Ask a Luminary

How Do I Move Past My Fear?

"I have been overwhelmed by FEAR of almost everything my whole life. I have been diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). but it all boils down to fear. I am 47 years old and want to finally live life instead of just safely exist!" ~ Nadine, Mountain View, CO Dear Nadine, The problem is that we all resist emotions, even though we have no control over what first shows up in our minds. The Buddha refers to this as having two darts in the body. The first dart is what shows up without our control. It's the fears, the moment we…

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