- When the sun stays out past 7 pm
- The smell of your favorite coffee shop
- Waking up without an alarm
- Perusing through old photo albums
- Reading a book in bed
- Leaving a hefty tip for a good waiter/waitress
- Sleeping on clean sheets
- Long lunch breaks
- Discovering a new hobby
- Afternoon naps
Tag: positivity (Page 2 of 7)
- Your thoughts create your experiences
- Let go of situations in your life that no longer serve a positive purpose
- Be a good friend
- You are courageous
- Push aside beliefs that have control over your life
- You are stronger than you realize
- With change and setbacks comes opportunity and growth
- Everything will be okay
- Be kind to yourself
- Stop and smell the roses
- If you remove your fear you remove your suffering
- Surround yourself with those that want you to grow
- Follow happiness
- Do not accept others’ definition of your life
- You are loved
-keep shining
Where does fear come from?…
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.
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…Past experiences, regret, hurting others, loneliness, trauma, not adhering to cultural and social norms…
The list is never ending. Fear can be the reason for staying in a stagnant relationship, not speaking up against something that isn’t right, or staying at a crumby job. The fear of going against what we know, going against people’s expectations of us, and being different is what keeps us stuck in fear-based thinking. Everything we do is decided with either love or fear.
Believe it or not, fear can dissipate when you think new thoughts you’ve never thought about before. And change comes from thinking those new thoughts and acting on them. I know this concept terrifies people because we want to hold onto what we know, what is easy, and what doesn’t rock the boat. But the downside to that mentality is our own desires, goals, dreams, and independence suffer because we are scared. What we forget to realize is that letting go of this fear is easier than holding on. It’s when we let go and think new thoughts that the new stuff will find us.
When we are so used to acting a certain way, having a certain job, being around certain people, etc. we get used to it. We get so used to having these things in our lives that we do not think about it much. We are fearful of letting go because we hoard fears of not being able to replace those things, or fear that its replacement is not any better than what we gave up. And it completely makes sense that this is a terrifying, debilitating thought. We put more value on avoiding a possibility of regret than we do on living life. But if we are not getting what we want out of life, if we are not happy…Why not make some changes? What is there to really even be fearful of? We cannot make room for new things, new perspectives, and new experiences until we clear out what is not serving us. This is where we gain clarity; when we get rid of thoughts that do not have a place anymore. This does not mean the things we get rid of are not special, important, or at one point exactly what we wanted or needed…It just means we are moving on, moving forward, and honoring our feelings and our truth.
(To read more about avoiding feelings, click here.)
We all know on a deep level what it is we want and what’s missing, but we feel safe when we hoard fearful thoughts. We don’t even know what we want because we are too scared to even think about it. Those fearful thoughts (or avoidance of those thoughts) give us excuses to stay in our comfort zone and be bored. Often times that feels better than uprooting pieces of our lives or hurting people. But harboring fear and accepting boredom prevents us from all of the new things that await for us to arrive. There is so much we can learn and experience in this life when we remove fear. And do you want to know the best part? All of those things are possible. Everything we want is on the other side of fear. Fear is just a state of mind. Our fears create barriers because most of the time facing our fears is actually bigger than the fears themselves. We just get in our own heads. We are our own biggest roadblock to the love and happiness we want to experience.
We create our own prison. We fear so much that we build walls for protection, but ultimately those walls are a huge detriment to our sole purpose here on earth; to experience it. It’s when we remove those walls, start being honest with ourselves, and get through the fearful stuff that we end up on the other side. It’s on the other side that we find ourselves, we speak our truth, we are complete, and we are happy. On the other side of fear is where we find everything we ever wanted. Do not let fear create your future.
We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are ~
-keep shining
Other related blogs : A Letter To Yourself, Guilt, Honoring Your Uniqueness
Wouldn’t it feel better
If you just let go
Without worrying about pleasing everyone
Or feel disappointed when you aren’t perfect
Wouldn’t it feel better
To smile when you’re proud
And celebrate your successes
Rather than remind yourself of your flaws
Wouldn’t it feel better
To say what you think
Be who you are
And love everything you bring to this world
And isn’t it wonderful
That you can
-keep shining
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The entire concept and culture around emotional pain completely fascinates me. We hurt a lot as humans; it’s a part of our growth and resiliency while we venture through life. And most of the pain we deal with day to day is our thoughts. What is fascinating to me is that we choose to let pain burden us, and because of that we experience things like confusion, irritability, difficulty concentrating, fear, anxiety, anger, rejection, humiliation, perceived failure, mood swings, guilt, shame, and self-blame (to name a few)…And to add to this long list, pain causes us to mentally rewind time, replay situations, ruminate, and wish for different outcomes. AKA-we are constantly and subjectively experiencing mental suffering. And do you know the worst part is? It’s addicting…
It’s easy for our minds to focus on and discuss the negative; what isn’t going well, what hurts, what upsets us, what we don’t like. Our minds are hardwired to have a stronger focus on and easier pull towards pain rather than happiness and optimism. It’s engrained into our cultures and entangled in our every day life to focus on negativity…It’s contagious to experience pain because it helps us relate to others and gives us something to talk about. We are motivated by pain and negativity, and we gravitate towards focusing on others’ pain and negativity more so than what is going well in their lives.
I am constantly being asked how I manage pain from my personal life experiences as well as the secondary trauma I acquire from helping those that have endured horrific pain. I did not realize how much pain could gradually seep into my life until working in a career filled with it. That being said, I have come to live by a few very important rules regarding pain and how I ensure it doesn’t control me…
- First and foremost – every painful, broken piece of us doesn’t need to be analyzed, collected, or remembered… Some pieces need to stay lost because they don’t belong to us, they happened to us. Let the pieces go. Move forward, and do not hold onto these things. Do not claim the pain, just understand that it was an experience. And as hard as it is, do not tie emotion to it. It just is, and let it be just that.
- Change your beliefs about the pain. We cannot experience love, humility, positivity without an understanding of gratitude. And without any pain, we would fail to see how great life can truly be. How can you look at the painful experience as a learning curve, or a helpful step in the right direction? What positives can come out of this pain? How can you change the belief about the purpose of the pain to help it motivate you?
- Do not run away from pain, allow yourself to feel everything. Be present with your feelings, allow whatever it is that wants to come up to do so. Do not be embarrassed; purge the emotion. This is how we move forward, otherwise we stuff things deep inside to be dealt with later, on top of all the other pain we try to avoid. Embrace what you need to feel; it helps to understand and accept the pain… A very good tool for this is meditation.
- Slow down. We cannot allow ourselves to feel if we are constantly going at a pace of 100 miles an hour. Give yourself time to breathe, and figure out how to move forward with these painful experiences. I am guilty of purposefully going 100 miles an hour so I do not have time to ruminate on pain… It’s how I distract myself, and it is not healthy. Take time to be with yourself, and work through the pain before it gets stuffed deep down to come up later. And trust me, it will come up later.
- When you are right in the muck of your pain, ask yourself if there’s any piece of this that you can control. If the answer is no, you cannot control or change anything about this, then learn to let it go after you process through it. *Meditation is super helpful here also*. We cannot hold onto pain that serves us no purpose. If we can’t make any positive changes, and if the situation is not in our control, we must move on and move forward. What other option do we really have?
- And lastly – how can you make your pain a part of you? Always remind yourself to use pain to your advantage. Remind yourself that pain makes you who you are, and it has helped to develop you into your current self…Your soulful, resilient self. And isn’t that a beautiful thing?
You are never more than one thought away from peace~
-keep shining
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