Spirituality and Self Help » fear

How Writing Can Save Your Life

shimon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:45:55 +0000

This is a guest post by B. Lynn Goodwin. Lynn is a freelance writer, editor, teacher, former caregiver, and the author of You Want Me To Do WHAT? – Journaling for Caregivers (Tate Publishing), which can be purchased at Amazon, through Writer Advice, or from your local bookstore. She is published in numerous anthologies, magazines, newspapers, e-zines, and blogs, and she owns Writer Advice . When you visit the website, be sure to click on Journaling for Caregivers. Lynn is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour.
Have you ever been a caregiver for a spouse, parent, child, special needs child, or yourself?

If so, you know that you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions,

paying bills, giving medicine, adjusting machines, returning phone calls, and helping with matters that used to be private.

Why write about it?

Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Writing will improve your life and could even save it. Do not underestimate the power of journaling.
It allows you to vent, delve into issues, and untangle messes. It lets you analyze or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. Journaling releases mental toxins and deepens awareness.

What do you do if you don’t know what to write about?

One way to avoid facing a blank page is to use sentence starts. There are over 200 of them in You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and they will trigger all kinds of memories, plans, and ideas.

Want to try it right now? Pick one of the sentence starts listed here:
Today, I want…
Sometimes I wonder…
I lust after…
It’s hard to admit…
What if…
I will always love…
Finish the sentence and keep going. You are journaling. Explore your hopes and fears. Vent. Analyze. Process. Reflect. Make discoveries and find the hope that can hide when you are overwhelmed by your daily routine.

Are judgment gremlins nagging at you as you write? Ask them to go outside or tell them to play on the freeway. Your journal is yours. It does not need their approval.

Journaling helps you see yourself and your loved one from a new perspective. Journals never interrupt or argue. They let you evaluate, interpret, and rediscover your love.
Use the prompts in You Want Me to Do WHAT? to ease the stress of caring for a patient with dementia, stroke, cancer or any degenerative disease.

Use them if you care for someone with special needs or a mental illness.
Use them if you are a primary caregiver, spouse of a primary caregiver, or a long distance caregiver.
Use these prompts if you are in any kind of dependent relationship. Use them to process the end of a relationship. They will help you understand what happened.
Writing is therapeutic. It saves lives. Your truths are eager to come out. Let them spill onto the page, and see what doors writing opens for you.

How to Overcome The Fear of Failure

shimon — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:00:47 +0000

This is a guest post by Courtney Phillips. Courtney is the owner of Rated Colleges
It’s basic human nature to judge and be judged by our successes or lack of them; it’s a trait that we’re born with and one that’s passed on to us by the adults around us from the time we’re old enough to develop reasoning skills.

Usually the children who are good at something and talented are lauded and feted by society; there’s no room for the also-rans and the jack-of-all-trades in a world where you have to excel academically, have a flair for the arts, sing like a bird, dance like a peacock, play like a jock, and so on and so forth, to be able to say that you’re a success.

This is exactly why we grow up fearing failure. What exactly is failure? In the eyes of society, it’s the act of not being outstanding at anything you attempt. Your parents expect you to top your class when you’re in school; and when you grow up, they expect you to get into the best colleges and land a high-profile job, one that will allow them to be proud of you.

Most people end up failing for this very reason – they’re not able to live up to the expectations of their loved ones. And that my friends, is the root cause of failure – EXPECTATIONS. When we don’t expect anything, it’s easy to be content with what we have. And when we are content with what we have, we’re in that elusive state we refer to as happiness.

Overcoming failure

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. — Zig Ziglar

So if you’re looking to overcome your fear of failure, here’s what you need to do :

1Adopt a never-say-die attitude. If there’s something you want badly, (the operative word here is YOU), there’s no shame in trying to achieve it even if you fail repeatedly. After all, if your happiness depends on it, why should you worry about what other people think or say?

History is replete with stories where success comes after multiple failures – we only have to look at the legend of Robert Bruce and the spider and Thomas Edison’s failed inventions for inspiration.

2 Think of the worst that could happen: Very often, the worst that could happen is that you suffer varying levels of embarrassment. Sometimes you also end up losing precious time, money and other resources. But if what you stand to gain is much more valuable than what you could lose in the process of trying, it’s worth making the effort.

3Think of the best that could happen: What if you end up achieving your goals in a spectacular manner? You’d never know how it felt unless you tried. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses of all time, said that genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. So if you try hard enough and put your heart and soul into attaining your goal, you’re definitely well on the road to success.

It’s always the first step that’s the hardest to take; once you get past this, you’re definitely going to gain courage with each and every further step that you take. So if you’re able to muster up the strength to take the initial initiative, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

In this video Phil Van Hooser explains more about the fear of failure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvtOMLocVeg

Religion- Fear, Deception and Rock and Roll

shimon — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:19:26 +0000

Out of all the dictionary definitions to the word Religion my favorite is “a particular system of faith and worship.” That is what religion really is it’s a system of rules and “ways” to reach god or some higher force.

Whenever someone is saying something to me I always try to think why is he saying that. Does he really believe what he said? or does he have a secret agenda? or maybe both. So when people are saying to me that god only works a certain way, or he will only listen if I’ll do what they are saying I’m wondering why do they say that?

The answer I believe is power and money. They achieve it with Fear. Muhammad tried to spread the Islam with force by killing people or as he called it Jihad. Christians tried to spread their beliefs with missionaries, they often came to uncivilized places helped the people there and converted them along the way. Often using peoples pain to convince them. In both religions the people understood that their power is in the number of followers.

Religion can only exist if people believe in their rules. Knowing that all religions invented stories. They invented the devil, demons and all kind of evil spirits. The purpose was to fear people into believing whatever they wanted.

The second thing they did was to give the followers pride in belonging to their religion. They invented the sinners. Those are the people they couldn’t convince. They created a separation.

In addition they claimed to have direct contact with god, that they are his messengers and that god talks only to them.
Some religions even have ranks like the Buddhism. That is another tool to boost the followers ego and it’s profitable because often ranks can be bought with money.

In Judaism they did something interesting. It’s not easy to become Jewish it takes time. you have to study the bible and prove to them that you really want to become Jewish. That way they once again create the illusion of elite, just like if you are standing at the entrance of a club and you see a lot of people trying to get in and somehow through connections with people you manage to enter. Because it’s hard you appreciate it more.

Christianity was formed by the disciples of Jesus. He never intended to form a religion the same is true for Buddhism. The Buddha and Jesus were enlightened, however their teachings were distorted.

The bible was edited according to the wishes of a minority. We know this because of the writing, some of the writing is older, it belongs to earlier times and some is newer yet in the bible they are mixed together. The bible was written by different people at different times.

Many wars took place in the name of religion and god. Religions created god in their image. A jealous god that needs people to worship him and fulfill all the commandments, there are 613 commandments in Judaism. Revengeful god the punishes people. Most importantly they invented hell, a place where you are forever punished if you are making the “wrong” choices. Thus eliminating the free choice because it’s not really free if you have to pay for it.

From what I’ve learned true spirituality doesn’t require just one way, every way is legitimate even religion. God loves everyone even the killers, think about it, is it possible that something will occur without the consent of the almighty god? God has given us the power to control our lives and we do it every day whether we know it or not. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be consequences to our actions because in our world every thought or action has a consequence.

Contrary to religion some people completely negate the concept of god,they ask questions like if good exists how come he didn’t stop the Holocaust? These questions are not relevant, because once good gave us the power to create our reality he doesn’t interfere, if he did he would interfere with free choice. The truth is every soul decides when to perish. It’s not god that says time’s up.

So go ahead believe in what makes you happy and remember everyone are doing what they are doing because they think they are benefiting themselves or others. They are not evil.

here is a great video by the hilarious comedian George Carlin and though I don’t agree with his opinions about god he is very accurate about religion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

Self Acceptance and The Art of Loving Yourself – The Sequel

shimon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:59:49 +0000

In my previous post about this subject I wrote about self acceptance and loving yourself. In this post I want to elaborate and tell you an interesting allegory I recently read.

One man was so troubled by the look of his shadow and felt so detested by his footprints and steps, that he decided to get rid of them. He decided to run away from them. He stood up on his feet and started running, But every time he laid another step on the ground, another step was created, and his shadow caught up with him without any trouble.

He decided that the shadow caught him because he didn’t run fast enough. He hasten his steps, and ran faster and faster, without stopping, until eventually he dropped down and died.

he didn’t understand that if he would just stand under the shadow of a tree, His shadow would disappear, and if he just sat quietly ,then there wont be more steps.

Most of us act a lot like this man. we try to run away from our shadows.
The shadow in this allegory is anything you don’t like about yourself, may it be your anger, grief, fear, greed or even physical attributes like your nose. When you’re alive you cast a shadow there is no other option. However the shadow isn’t real, It cant live on it’s own it’s there because some of the sun beams that hit you are blocked and can’t pass through.

People create their confusion by creating an ideal. They are trying to reach an ideal and Because of it they condemn themselves for not being the way they “should”. When you compare yourself to your ideal you feel like something is missing.

How can you be happy if you have so many things that need to happen before you can feel happy. Have you ever noticed that it’s enough for one little thing to go wrong and you can feel bad? Why not reverse it. Make yourself a lot of conditions that need to occur before you can feel sad and feel happy because of the smallest things.

When you think “if only this will happen then I will be happy” you’re putting a barrier between yourself and happiness because even if it will happen there will always be something else.

Once you agree that anger or fear or “bad” thoughts will reside in you, you will be on the right path to self acceptance. It’s similar to a situation where your house is full of darkness and you say that the darkness needs to go away before you hit the light switch. The darkness is simply the absence of light it isn’t real and when you will turn on the light it will go away. Fear ,anger etc are not real they are the absence of a happy and fulfilled life. It is because you can’t have fun that you’re angry other people are only an excuse.

God has created you and you condemn yourself? You are basically saying that god is wrong and everything should be according to what you say. You can’t be smarter than god nor can you change what he created. The paradox is that once you accept yourself you and everyone around you will be different and life will become easier.

The man in the story tried to escape from his shadow, and that’s how most of us act. When we feel anger we say to ourselves don’t feel like that because “it’s not good” or someone said it’s bad. By doing so you’re stifling your anger and with time it becomes rage. Then your anger will permeate your thoughts and your body.

Once you see that you are still angry you say to yourself I haven’t stifled enough I should do it more even though it’s the reason for the rage in the first place. When you fight with yourself you always need to be on the guard because if you let go maybe your anger will resurface.

Where ever you will run your shadow will catch up, running isn’t the answer. Sitting under the shadow of a tree is. The shadow is peace and quiet. When you close your eyes the rays of the sun can’t penetrate and you can meditate to achieve your peace. The answer is within not in the world around you.

If you fight something you’re making it important. You’re focusing on it and it effects you. If you fight with the thoughts you have to use arguments. you’re trying to convince your mind. Just let go. When you clean your room there is no argument, You’re not saying to the room now I will clean you because you’re messy. You simply do it because it’s messy.

Here is another great video about self acceptance and loving yourself.