When my coaching clients find their purpose in life, they become so enthusiastic about their new discovery.

But the fear of the unknown leaves them in a frozen status.

They are afraid of entering and exploring the new ground, because they think they might get in trouble. They are afraid of losing what they already have by jumping into the unknown.

So, they remain paralyzed.

They know what they should be doing, but they can’t take action because they think there is a risk involved with this big life transition.

The Internal Conflict Between What You Want and What You Already Have

Yes, you will be leaving your well known life and begin to embrace a totally new lifestyle.

But, here’s something that’s worth thinking about:

Aren’t you already in trouble?!

What urged you to search for your true passion?

Weren’t you hungry for a meaning in your life?

Aren’t you already feeling the pain of being lost and wandering aimlessly through life lacking a real purpose?

Are you happy with doing work that has no meaning and wasting your precious time doing something that doesn’t really matter to you?

This Shallow Life Leaves You Already In Trouble!

So, what do you have to lose?

As Steve Jobs says, “You’re already naked, so there is no reason why you don’t follow your heart”

Life is short. So, get out of your fears, do something and make a difference.

In fact, once you start taking action, you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t, and you will soon gain clarity about what you should be doing to live and connect your passion to a profitable path.

The only way to beat the fear of the unknown is to take the first step. If you’re afraid of getting in trouble, remember that you’re already in a bigger trouble by not following your heart. If you listen to the voice of your fears, you’ll live an empty life. But, if you listen to the voice of your heart, you’ll live a remarkable life.

Take the first step and beat the fear of the unknown. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

M. Tohami helps unfulfilled professionals live with passion. He’s the creator of The P.A.S Technique: The world’s easiest way to find your passion and purpose in life. Click to discover how he recovered from a broken self-esteem to become a bestselling author.

Photo credit: Natalie Shell

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Finding Bliss: How to Reverse Engineer Happiness

The 6 Components of a Happy Life

When I tell people I think life should be effortless, they usually laugh. They think I’m joking. Everyone knows life isn’t effortless, that getting things done and achieving anything worthwhile requires hard work, time and a lot of effort. Success costs, and people who become successful without paying are either cheats, crooks or just lucky.

Think, for a moment, about the metaphors you use to describe your experience of life. We often see life as a struggle, a battle, a war, a difficult journey with obstacles to be overcome, a test to be passed.  These images colour our actions and determine the way we go about doing things. We have come to see brute force as the best way to get things done. In the west, especially, we tend to carry around images of the lone pioneer, the individual battling against the forces of chaos, taming nature. To have achieved is to have beaten the odds, to have struggled and held on and never given up. Victory is for the tenacious, the resilient, the person who never gives in.

But there is another way of seeing things, and another way of getting things done, a way which sees life differently and recognizes the importance of harmony, balance and living peacefully, the importance of following the natural course of things.

Every situation – whether a relationship, an organization, a community – has within itself a natural structure, a kind of grain along which everything flows. Sometimes it’s called a ‘culture.’ Every situation is different, and the effortlessly successful amongst us do not make assumptions. They watch carefully until they understand the natural geometry of the situation, and seek to fit in. They don’t waste energy fighting the way things are – they ‘go with the flow.’

Success can come about by force – the energy of revolution can make things shift – but sustainable results only ever come about by going with the grain, seeking out the path of least resistance, and hence leveraging off the natural structure of the situation. Lao Tzu, the semi mythical Taoist master, wrote, ‘By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond winning.’ Water always seeks the low ground and always yields to resistance. Yet it carries enormous energy and can, over many years, wear down sharp rocks into small, smooth pebbles and carve wide, deep channels through the landscape.

When I was a kid, my father taught me how to saw wood. He showed me which way to cut – no good cutting against the grain since it will be hard work and the timber will only crack and splinter. And he showed me how to hold the saw – not too tightly, not pushing down into the wood but allowing it to move naturally and fluidly, guiding it ever so gently. Let the saw do the work, was his summary. The skilful craftsman knows better than to use force.

Lao Tzu continues, ‘Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.’ Our attempts to speed things along and do things in our own way and in our own time usually make things worse. To pull fruit off the tree before it is ripe is to end up with sour fruit; to row against the current is futile.

A river rarely takes a straight course, meandering instead through the natural shape of the landscape, keeping to the lowest points, moving around mountains and hills. But the water keeps flowing powerfully, carving great valleys into the landscape. Like nature, our own achievements can take time; they happen in their own way and at their own pace.

To resist the natural course – to row against the tide – is exhausting and pointless; those who try only wear themselves out getting nowhere. But hose who embrace the reality of the situation, tap into its energy and use it creatively can be wildly successful. Instead of fighting the natural order, they use its power and its energy to create results – and they do it effortlessly.

The effortlessly successful are also open to new experiences and accept that the future is a blank canvas. In the end, we know very little. My own life looks nothing like the way I imagined it; indeed, in many ways it is exactly what I would not have chosen. But things could hardly have worked out better. It is my belief that, when we relax and stop pretending that we are in control, life starts to work.

The truth is that we don’t really know what we want. Despite our search for certainty and a clear vision of the future, we cannot know what the future holds for us, what new lands we shall discover when our ship has been blown across the sea. All we can do is keep a vigilant eye for opportunity, relax and enjoy the journey. ‘Thinking that you know is a kind of sickness. The wise are sick of sickness, and so they are well.’

An effortless life is a truly effective one. When energy is not wasted on misguided attempts at control, and when we seek to follow the natural course, we can be supremely effective. We can find the tipping points and create enormous and sustainable change. And when we are open to new experiences, ready to fall into whatever comes our way, we can experience a truly vibrant and meaningful kind of life.

For more articles and resources, visit Effortless Abundance and check out http://sailwiththewind.com.

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How To Increase Self Discipline

How To Motivate Yourself

Do you ever experience negative emotions to the extent that you wish they would just go away forever?

We all do, and most people suffer unnecessarily because of them.

The good news is that you don’t have to do that. The bad news is that most people will do it anyway, even though the tools are right in front of their eyes.

Why?

Because of familiarity.

It’s uncomfortable to face the unknown, even though that is where all the possibilities lie. You cannot have certainty and possibility.

You must face your emotions head on.

That is the key to peace. When you are willing to do that, you have reclaimed your freedom.

1. Now

You’re probably familiar with the Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. In the book, Eckhart puts forth a simple proposition, stay in the now and you will feel peace.

Most people don’t understand it right away, but when they do, their life changes dramatically, because when you’re in the now, you are present with everything around you.

Think of a time when you were anxious or afraid of a future event, and notice what happened when that event happened and you experienced it.

It wasn’t as bad as you thought it was, was it?

That’s because when you experienced it, you were in the now, and when that happened, the unknown became known.

2. Acceptance

This is another part of being in the now. Most people try to run away from their negative emotions. They eat, watch TV, have sex, read, or hang online.

When you get curious about the feeling and accept it as a part of you, it tends to disappear.

But how do you accept it when it feels so painful?

That’s the first hurdle you have to overcome, because when you do, you will realize that the pain was only half an inch thick.

You can either learn to let go of your negative emotions, or you can keep doing what you’ve been doing up until this point.

3. EFT

EFT is weird, but it works. Nowadays I use something called FasterEFT, which is more efficient and uses a few tricks from NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

It’s faster, and it works better than classic EFT, at least for me. The mistake most people make is they dismiss EFT because of how it looks.

Another mistake is that they use it a few days and give up. Changing how you feel means going in and cleaning stuff up, and most of us have a lot of garbage stored in our brain, so it takes time.

But after a while you start feeling a deep sense of peace, joy, and wholeness. At that point you know that it’s all worth it.

4. The Work

The Work was created by Byron Katie, and it’s a system of four simple questions:

• Is it true?
• Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
• How do you react when you believe this thought?
• Who would you be without this thought?

That’s how it starts, and while my paraphrasing of the questions may not be perfect, the questions still hold power, because they open up your mind and beliefs to new possibilities.

There are so many options to feel better that I am confused about the fact that people still try to drink and eat their problems away.

5. NLP

Last, but definitely not least is NLP, which I use when I work with my own clients. NLP gives you the user’s manual for your brain.

It allows me to help my clients achieve quick changes that have big ramifications in their life.

As an example, one client came to me with writer’s block. She had trouble with anxiety when she sat down to write.0

She loved writing, but it wasn’t happening. She had some bad memories and experiences from the past around writing, and when we cleared those up, everything changed.

You see, we all have internal programs we learn. Sometimes we learn them in childhood, and sometimes we learn them as adults.

Some of these programs aren’t helpful, such as constantly worrying, stopping yourself from writing, or scaring yourself so much that you can’t go after your dreams.

It’s not that these programs are bad, because they work perfectly. The problem happens when they stop you from doing something you want.

That’s when you need to change the programs within you.

The Bottom Line

In the end, you are the only one that can make the changes necessary. I’ve had many people email me, and they want to feel good without any effort.

If you want to transform who you are and live up to your full potential, you have to first face the dragon (your fears), but what you’ll realize is that your fears are only half an inch thick.

It’s terrifying, but it’s over in a heartbeat.

When you let go of your fears and negative memories, your life changes.

The question then is, are you ready for it?

Henri writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his FREE life-changing course right now: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less.

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10 Secrets To Success

The Language of Success

How much better would your life be if you were unbreakable? If you knew that no matter what happened that you would survive and persevere — and that maybe you’d even come out a little better? We cannot escape pain, difficulty, failure, tragedy, and heartache. Sooner or later it will find us despite our best efforts to protect ourselves. Instead of trying to bob and weave  what life throws at us, I’d rather have the comfort of knowing that I can take life’s best shot and be able to get back up and move forward. To me, that’s empowerment. Having that kind of personal fortitude and resilience is a game changer. Instead of being dogged by fear and uncertainty, you will have inner peace and confidence that you will survive.

The American Psychological Association (APA) focused their research on resilience after the tragic events of 9/11. Resilience, according to the APA, is the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, and from sources of stress such as work pressures, health, family or relationship problems. They found that a resilient person is not only able to handle the crisis of the moment more effectively, but that they are also able to recover and get back on their feet more quickly.

According to the APA, you can create more personal resilience with these ten tips:

1. Make connections. Personal resilience doesn’t mean it’s all up to you. Having good relationships with close family members, friends, or others is critical to resilience and well-being. When tragedy strikes, the worst thing you can do is avoid friends and loved ones. Start cultivating your relationships today, so when you need support, you have a whole network of people to help.

2. Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems. Don’t fall into the trap of all-or-nothing thinking, which says that everything is either perfect or terrible. There are always shades of gray. Focus less on the past and more on the future you want. Also, look for exceptions. In Solution Focused Therapy, exceptions are those times when the problem is gone or at least not as bad. Are there times in the current crisis you’re your problems don’t feel so insurmountable?

3. Accept that change is a part of living. Know that whatever you’re going through others have experienced before. You are not alone — change, in whatever form, is a natural part of life.

4. Move toward your goals. When the present is difficult, focus on a better future. What do you want your life to be? What goals do you have that you can start moving toward?

5. Take decisive actions. Avoid checking out by taking whatever control you have over your situation and doing something (however small) about it.

6. Look for opportunities for self-discovery. One of my favorite sayings is “Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” Tragedy and pain can be an opportunity to re-evaluate your life — where you’ve been and where you want to go. Ask yourself the tough questions and look for ways to grow.

7. Nurture a positive view of yourself. Be careful how you talk to yourself. Don’t accept blame when it isn’t warranted. Focus on your strengths and abilities to get you through.

8. Keep things in perspective. When something bad happens, it can color all aspects of our life. Your job is to put it into perspective. Don’t let one bad event taint your view of the other areas in your life.

9. Maintain a hopeful outlook. While easier said than done, just watch how you explain or think about your situation. As ancient Greek philosopher said, “People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.” When possible, take the more positive and optimistic view.

10. Take care of yourself. Do what you can to sleep well and eat well. Try to get some exercise and do things you enjoy. If you feel like nothing is enjoyable, do things that make you feel less horrible. In short, be nice to yourself.

Being unbreakable doesn’t mean that you can’t cry or need to act tough or mask your feelings by putting on a happy face. Being unbreakable means you give yourself the freedom to break, knowing you have the tools to put yourself back together again.

Are you ready to create more money, time, energy, and passion in your life? Learn how to live your best life now with these free resources:

Get the “Achieving Peak Performance” ebook and video now! (free for a limited time)

You can also join a community of passionate people at Richer Life who want to achieve more in life and at work. With your free membership, you can participate in conversations I have with experts, celebrities, authors, and thought leaders that are laser-focused on practical ways to drive more money, motivation, and meaning into your life. Take the first step toward creating a better life by joining Richer Life for free now!

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How To Find Time For New Habits

‘There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.’ ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You want to lose weight, but you keep eating poorly.

You know you need to exercise, but you just can’t seem to get moving.

You’d like to start that project, but maybe you’ll do it tomorrow when you aren’t so tired.

Our dreams and good intentions are powerful, real, and hold the promise of a happier life, a better you, a sense of pride and accomplishment. But when the rubber meets the road, when it’s time to take action, it feels like you are wading waist-high in water with weights tied to your feet. Your heart is willing, but your mind and body resist. The mental difficulty of even the smallest actions can be shocking and immensely disappointing.

If you have intended with all of your heart to create a good habit, drop a bad one, fulfill a goal, or complete a project, and you have failed at it, you are not alone. Nearly everyone has difficulty maintaining resolve and following through. Even those who are self-disciplined weren’t born that way. It is a learned skill — one that takes practice and the specific knowledge of how to go about it.

When you become a master at launching but a failure at completion, self-esteem inevitably plummets.

Thoughts like, “I’m weak, I’m lazy, this is too hard for me,” often creep in to poison your confidence and further weaken your resolve. To save face, perhaps you create excuses — you’re too busy, you aren’t feeling well, you don’t really need to change. All of this behavior is smoke and mirrors, an attempt by your psyche to keep you comfortably ensconced in inertia and the status quo.

It is as thought there are two people inside of you. There’s the one who wants things comfortable, easy, uncomplicated, immediately satisfying, and unchanging. But then there’s the other you — the one who won’t allow the first to be satisfied with the status quo. It’s the “potential you” who continues to attempt positive change, growth, and life betterment. These two are in a constant battle, with the “status quo you” coming out on top more often that not.

So how does one strengthen the “potential you” with the resolve to conquer the status quo? How does one get over the hump of resistance, inertia, and discomfort that is the standard response to anything new and hard?

You know it can be done, because you’ve seen others do it. Unless you have a mental or physical handicap, your circumstances and difficulties are no different that anyone’s.

If you aren’t following through to create a habit, accomplish a goal, and complete a task, there are really only three things standing in your way.

1. Lack of desire. You may say you want something, but you don’t want it badly enough to deal with the discomforts and inconvenience of getting it.

2. Lack of honesty. You are not being real with yourself about your desire for this accomplishment. You aren’t accepting 100% personal responsibility for making this happen. Everything is a choice — your choice.

3. Lack of information. You don’t have the practical information or skills to overcome resistance and follow through consistently.

Each of these roadblocks can be overcome, allowing you to strengthen your resolve to accomplish just about anything your mind and body are capable of accomplishing. Here are 12 strategies for doing just that:

1. Do your research. Before you begin any new habit or goal, give yourself several days to know exactly what’s involved in making this change happen. How much time will it take? How will you insert it into your day? Who else will it impact and how will you deal with them? What special equipment or information will you need? What preparation is necessary? What must you give up to make this happen? How will it impact your life once you’ve accomplished it?

2. Make an honest decision. Armed with the knowledge from your research, make an informed and honest choice. Are you willing to do the work involved in making this thing happen? Will the outcome be worth the effort? It’s hard to know for sure until you start taking action, but you should have some idea of what to expect before you charge ahead.

3. Reduce overwhelm. If the goal or habit seems daunting, it will quash your desire to work hard for it. Break it down into small, simple, and brief actions or tasks. Make it so easy to do that it doesn’t feel like a chore. With a new habit, start with five minutes a day, every day — slowly increasing your time over several weeks.

4. Make a public promise. Tell people what you are doing. Announce it to friends, family, on Facebook and Twitter. When you go public with your intentions, it immediately strengthens your resolve. A public commitment shifts your own thinking about your seriousness. No one wants to be embarrassed in front of others.

5. Set up regular accountability. Create a system of accountability so that you can report your actions, successes and failures, every day. This may be a friend or it could be on Facebook or in a forum of some kind. Don’t just announce it once and then disappear. Let the world know about your progress.

6. Expect difficulties. There will be life situations that might try to get in the way of your efforts. And it is so easy to allow them to undermine your work. Think in advance of possible problems that might arise and decide how you will deal with these situations. Decide in advance what you will allow to interrupt your work and stick to the plan.

7. Use positive self-talk. When you want to quit, your mind starts reaching for excuses and reasons to give you an exit ramp from the work you are doing. Be aware of your mind’s efforts to sabotage you, and intentionally begin saying supportive and positive things to yourself the minute you feel mental resistance.

8. Visualize the outcome. Visualization has an incredibly powerful effect on the brain. It can actually rewire neural pathways in your brain to support the physical efforts you are making. Take a few minutes prior to taking action on your habit or goal to visualize yourself accomplishing it.

9. Move past failure. It takes practice to strengthen resolve and follow through on just about any endeavor. And if you tackle something hard, like diet or exercise, chances are good you will fail a few times before you are successful. Failure doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It might mean you started too big or didn’t plan ahead. Learn from the failure and start again, correcting what you think caused you to give up. Be kind to yourself and know that building resolve is a work in progress.

10. Attempt one at a time. You may have many goals and many things you want to accomplish, but until you strengthen your resolve with one effort, don’t attempt to tackle several at a time. Begin the process of strengthening your resolve with something easy. When you accomplish that, move on to another, slightly harder effort. Build up to difficult goals or tasks so that you know what to expect and how to cope with interferences or problems.

11. Practice resolve in small ways daily. Without judging your success or failure, attempt to resist small temptations during your day (ie: snacking, surfing the internet too long, gossiping). Prove to yourself that you are capable of small acts of self-discipline. These little successes will support your larger efforts at strengthening resolve.

12. Accept full responsibility for your actions. Most of what happens to us in life is a result of our own choices. Yes, there are some things that are out of our control, but even then, we can choose how to react to them. We are not victims. We have an endless array of choices that can change the quality of our lives. There is tremendous power in that.

You have the gift of a powerful brain, but it sometimes has a mind of its own! Fortunately, you also have the ability to harness that power and apply it to a fixed purpose that can enhance your life, your health, and your happiness. If you exercise your mental muscle of resolve, over time, you will develop the mental strength and confidence to accomplish whatever you set out to do.

Barrie Davenport is a personal and career coach and founder of Live Bold and Bloom, a blog about bold and fearless living. She is also the creator of Discover Your Passion: A Step-by-Step Course for Creating the Life of Your Dreams.

“A Spirited Debate Will Strengthen Your Resolve” Art by: Daryl Vocat

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Words That Heal and Empower

Resilience or the ability to ‘bounce back’ after encountering problems is an essential trait. Inevitably, life will throw up some apparently adverse situations, and being able to deal with such circumstances in a positive and creative way is often a measure of how happy and successful a person is.

Scientific studies have shown that resilient people show lower levels of depression and are more likely to develop personally as a result of adversity than people with low levels of resilience.

Some people do seem to be more resilient by nature but, like most things, resilience is a trait which can be developed. The following are ways of doing so.

1.     Develop a positive self image. Everything starts in the mind – resilient people think well of themselves and see themselves in a positive way.

2.     Focus on building and maintaining relationships. Studies have shown that resilient people tend to have strong social networks – family, friends and colleagues are a great source of support when crises occur.

3.     Show appreciation. Being able to focus on the good things in your life and not dwell on problems will keep you in a positive mindset and help you to be more effective.

4.     See the good. We’ve all heard the ‘glass half full’ mentality – resilient people tend to see stressful events or crises as temporary or even as opportunities to learn and grow, rather than as unbearable problems.

5.     Be proactive. The holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, noticed that people in the camps who believed they had some measure of control over their circumstances were far more likely to survive than people who felt they were passive victims of circumstance. Resilient people take responsibility and take effective action to change things.

6.     Accept circumstances that cannot be changed. Some things simply cannot be altered and resilient people accept this, not wasting energy on trying to do the impossible.

7.     Develop goals and take appropriate action to achieve them. Having a sense of where you are going is important. Glitches and setbacks are inevitable, but resilient people keep the destination in mind.

8.     Take a long-term view and keep in mind a broader context. When seen from a bird’s eye perspective, problems tend to become less important.

9.     Be optimistic. Resilient people maintain a hopeful outlook, expecting positive outcomes. Of course, this can tip over to a ‘Pollyanna’ mentality but it is no more realistic to be negative and pessimistic than to expect the best.

10.  Keep learning. Resilient people are determined to learn useful lessons from setbacks and problems. Looking back, we might realize that we learned the most from what seemed to be the most difficult of circumstances.

Resilience is very often the factor which leads some people to overcome immense obstacles to become successful. Look at many well known, successful and wealthy people with humble or even deprived beginnings and you will see resilience in action. Take steps to develop resilience in your own life – it will serve you well.

Mark Harrison writes at EffortlessAbundance.com. Check out his Habit Builder Course, and get his RSS feed here.

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Words That Heal and Empower

Photo Credit: Robert Campbell Photography

Part 1:

Fear is an illusive giant. What is it? What color is it? How is it shaped? Where can it be found? Fear is everywhere and no where at the same time. It has no shape, color, sound, form, or solid visibility. We can see and feel only its effects. What to do when fear is stalking? Stop. Turn around. Look at it square in the face, And what? Fear has no eyes, no face, and no form.

The truth is that fear is: False Evidence Appearing Real.

This step prepares you to overcome fear, and gather up the courage to write your dream plan and to build your Dream Plan Book.

A wise Eddie Rickenbacker once said, “Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”

This truth brings us straight to the condition of fear. Fear is instinct gone wild! It is a protective mecha- nism designed to keep us safe in the wild.

What is fear?

It’s the hidden evil monster under our childhood bed; the unseen wild animal that caused our ancestors to hover in caves to avoid being eaten, and today, it’s the dreaded Friday afternoon “pink slip.”

Modern day fear has transformed into massive social pressure. If we don’t look good, smell good, drive the right car, wear the right cloth- ing, pay our bills exactly on a sched- ule; we feel and fear our very livelihood is threatened.

When we combine analytical thinking with instinct, the dangerous result can be unrealistic, unhelpful fears, and negative imaginations. In fear we expect the worst; imagine something bad that happened before, or imagine our survival threatened while perfectly safe. By focusing on fear we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Untreated fear can cause procrastination, indecision, blaming, immobilization, insecurity, and excuses, which all slow the realization of our dreams. Faith neu- tralizes fear. Instantly. When we act in fear, our nightmares come true. When we act in faith, we see our dreams come to life.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

And that was such a profound statement, because the object of our fear is not what harms us the most. What harms us the most is our fearful reaction. We have only to shine a flashlight under the bed, to make the invisible fear monster disappear.

We can neutralize fear most effectively by cultivating awareness of “pet fears” to move through them. Shine the light…talk about them, write about them, and take note of them during the day when they pop up in thoughts. Instead of pushing them away, begin to substi- tute with words of faith. The more they hide, the bigger they get! Feel the fear; shine your light of your awareness and faith on them to re- lease your hold on fear, and fear’s hold on you. It takes practice to make courage a new habit. Step into the new “promised land” of faith and personal success. To apply Step 1 to your life right now, write an inspirational comment in the Dreams to Reality Workbook to yourself about launching your courage.

Deborah S Nelson is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of Author Your Dreams Publishing

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10 Money Myths That Keep You From Making Big Money: Myth 2

In my last piece I outlined the place that the sale of fear is taking in our life. I noted the role fear plays in creating illness. I highlighted the major role of particularly guilty industries: the pharmaceutical companies, politicians, insurance companies and the news and advertising media, to name just five. These are entities that go out of their way to create a culture of fear to sell their products.

Because it is not a one-way street, however, this is not the whole story. Here in FEAR II, I outline the role we play in putting our self at the mercy of fear and dread and the personal responsibility we must own to manage these feelings. If you are interested, I explain this in greater detail, with clinical examples, in my book.

The first difficult and complex reality is that fear and dread are a very large and significant part of being human. These feelings and others, like a sense of doom, are essential elements of the human experience. Repeat this to yourself: “If I want to be fully human then I accept that fear and dread are a part of what I am.” Only by accepting this can you utilize your essential inner energy and at the same time ward off salesmen selling you more fear. You already have a plentiful supply.

The second reality is inherently more difficult to acknowledge. This is because most of us spend so much time trying to rid ourselves of fear or trying to avoid fear all together. In doing this we are denying the reality that it is quite normal to feel profoundly scared every day. If you have no sense of this you are likely cutting yourself off from your feelings and the vital energy and creativity that goes with them.

The third part, the hardest, is to realize how much it is in your interest to look into your own doom enclosed as you are as a physical entity. Close your eyes and stare into the abyss, the dark, the nothingness, the end, the loneliness, the abandonment, the sense of fading away, the terror that is in you. It is here, often to your shock, that you will find the light and source of energy that shines most brightly.

When, shaking with fear, you accept your fear the next step is to look it in the eye. Allowing your self this experience several times a day will ease your being at the mercy of your lower consciousness feelings. Doing this is only useful, of course, if you otherwise get on with what you WON’T and what you WILL do each day while accepting this experience as only one important part of feeling alive as you live. This practice frees you from being manipulated by the authoritarian voices in your own head or the voices outside who would encourage you to not feel, to look away, to seek safety and security, or conversely to attack, seek revenge, or retaliate against yourself or others.

Remember, finally, this decision, is a choice: to LOVE and BE WELL, or act out on your feelings as if you are a separate, isolated, strange specter alone with your ghoulish thoughts and fears. This you will recognize is the essence of all vampire, monster, horror and slasher books and films. This is commonly known as evil.

To know it, our fears and our dread, so we may contain it within ourselves, is to not inflict it on others, but instead to put it into the world in art or symbols of art, narratives or images. This allows us to then take it back inside our self in a more refined and less terrifying version. Here we may know our feelings and our self with comfort again.

This all, of course, depends on our having had a necessary amount of affectionate holding by parents or parent substitutes. If you have not had this amount of holding a therapist may be able to help you develop a sense of safety inside yourself. If you did have security as a child and you follow the practice outlined you will see that you think you are afraid of the forest, the dark and nothingness but you are really afraid of ‘nothing’. And, of course how can ‘nothing’ be fearful, except in the sense Augustine and Nietzsche said evil is ‘no-thing’.

As words are also not things, the words you choose will determine the thoughts that lead to your actions; this in turn will lead to consequences in terms of your peace of mind and your overall health and creativity.

If you choose to LOVE and BE WELL, then each day, morning and night, take a moment, close your eyes, let yourself relax, breath in and out, then say:

I WON’T deny my fears.

I WON’T let others project fear into me.

I WILL accept my doubts and fears.

I WILL extend love to the world.

I AM light and energy and LOVE in the midst of all darkness.

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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