It’s all about joy!

I was listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer’s podcast the other morning as I traveled to San Diego. I discovered his podcasts on iTunes one day, and have been hooked ever since (they’re free, and there are dozens of them available for download). Anyway, one of the calls he took was from a woman who was afraid to live what she believed was her life’s purpose. She wanted to write a novel, and felt it was something she’d been called to do, but found herself paralyzed with fear and couldn’t begin writing it.

I can relate. As a matter of fact, as I sat in Vesuvio, the infamous bar in the North Beach section of San Francisco two nights ago with a writer friend of mine, I listened to him lament about the same thing. He was afraid to begin his first novel because while he knows he’s capable of writing something really special, he’s afraid it won’t come out that way and doesn’t want to fail. Therefore, he’s procrastinated and come up with hundreds of ways to distract himself from beginning his book.

Fear is a funny thing. It comes from deep within us in many cases, and often takes us by surprise. I sometimes am stunned by the things that frighten me. When did I develop that fear? Where did that come from? Have I always been afraid of that?

Dr. Dyer’s advice to the woman who called was simple: he told her to approach anything she’s fearful of from a place of curiosity. Instead of being afraid, he told her to be curious. Curiosity, he explained, changes our internal dynamic and forces our minds to want to investigate things, rather than retreat from them.

I think it takes more than just sidelong inquisitiveness, though. I think to be successful in defeating fear with curiosity, one must dive wholeheartedly into whatever it is that they fear. I think it involves doing, as opposed to just contemplating. To me, it means rolling up the sleeves and digging in with the mindset of someone who has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Kids are great at this. When a young child wants to understand something, he explores it with wide eyes and a Zen-like mind. He grabs something, picks it up and examines it from every angle; he is actively curious! We, as adults, would be well served to learn from their example and do the same.

In addition to active curiosity, I think faith is an important component in overcoming fear. When we have faith that everything in our lives serves to bring us closer to our authentic selves - the selves that were born of the greatest good and purest love - we transcend boundaries. Faith brings us back into alignment with who we really are and dissolves our manmade boundaries.

The following affirmation can be a good reminder to bring you back to a space of the divine. If there’s something you’re afraid of, whatever it might be, try using this affirmation and repeating it silently or aloud a few times a day:

I am fearless. I approach life with childlike curiosity.

I am safe as I do so.

Every day, I explore and discover new ways of living, thinking and being that are in alignment with my greatest good.

My curiosity brings magnificence into my life.

I am joyful and I am adventurous, today and always.

Three times in two weeks, people have referenced the definition of insanity in conversations with me. It’s something I stumbled across on my own a few weeks ago, and then lately, it seems to be popping up everywhere.The definition I’m referring to is this: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.

Why am I bringing this up? Because today I got a haircut and the woman who cut my hair skillfully led me through a quick spiritual lesson that I apparently needed to hear again, but through a different set of ears. The lesson involved lessening my resistance and accepting change. (Similar post written last week entitled The Joy in Never Minding What Happens)

See, in many ways, I think I want change. In the case of my hair, I thought, “I’d like to look hipper.” As I talked to the stylist, though, and discussed my fears (”…don’t do bangs, minimize the appearance of my large forehead, soften my square jaw line, make it an easy cut to style because I prefer low maintenance, don’t go too short…”), she stopped me. She pointed out that I, like many who sit in her chair, was asking for change, yet was setting up so many parameters (fears) that I was likely to end up with the same style I walked in with!

Rather than let me do that, she gently suggested that if I wanted to look different and perhaps adopt a trendier ‘do, I’d have to abandon my age-old comforts and toss aside what I’m used to and try something new. At that point she laughed and said, “What’s the definition of insanity everyone talks about? If you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result, you’re insane.” After hearing that for the third time in two weeks, I decided to trust her judgment, suspend my fears, and let her do what she does best.

When she finished cutting my hair, I absolutely loved it. It was completely different, yet perfect. It’s a style I couldn’t have asked for directly if I’d wanted to. However, when I loosened my grip and cast aside my fears, she was given room to shine and shine she did!

In the case of hair, change isn’t so tough. After all, it grows back. In other (bigger) life situations, however, making significant changes feels riskier. It requires that we dig deeper into our “go with the flow/stop resisting” mentality to accomplish our goals.

Easier said than done, but here’s a few tips I’ve found useful:

Many decisions can be undone. In a lot of cases, when there’s a big change we’d like to make that requires a tough decision, we’re so overwhelmed with fear that we forget we can always choose again. The beauty in being human and having free will is that if one decision doesn’t work out, many times we can make another decision and aim for a better result. Not always, but often.

When decisions can’t be undone, such as donating an organ to someone in need (extreme example, but I think it gets the point across!), faith is required. I remember my mother saying, in reference to decisions she made after she and my dad got divorced, that she did the best she could with what she had. In other words, she made the greatest decisions possible with the information or experience she had at that point in her life. She had to have faith things would work out in everyone’s highest good in the end. From where I’m sitting, they definitely did.

Learn to trust your inner guidance. I’m a big believer in trusting my gut, but it requires that I quiet my mind long enough to listen to what it’s trying to say. When we listen to our inner guidance, we’re connecting with energy that comes from source. Source energy connects absolutely everyone and everything and is the ultimate keeper of our highest good. Strongly cognitive people are uncomfortable with this method because it eliminates the analytical fact-finding element of our minds and relies on something more spiritual. However, from personal experience, my gut’s never been wrong and has often provided me with information that I wouldn’t have known otherwise, which has led me to higher ground.

How can we quiet our minds long enough to begin hearing what our guts have to say? Meditation. (For more information on how to meditate, refer to The Basics of Meditation.)

Value yourself enough to trust that you make good decisions. A friend of mine told me that whenever he makes a decision - whether it’s spending money on a big purchase or deciding to take the day off from work - he immediately makes a second decision to accept his first decision. I loved the way that sounded, because anyone familiar with a second-guessing monkey mind knows that there are some decisions that, as self-doubting humans, we instantly second-guess. And it’s not just that we’re second guessing our decision. It goes deeper. We’re second-guessing ourselves. We don’t trust our ability to make choices that positively serve us. An affirmation I say each day to overcome this is, “I always make great decisions that are in my highest good.” Somehow it always seems to work out that way.

Do you have other suggestions for how to make big decisions confidently? There are plenty I’ve left off this list (a choice to keep the post more concise), so please share the ones that work well for you. I’d love to hear them!

A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about obesity. My friend took a very strong stand against it, claiming that in most cases, overweight people just need to admit they have a problem and “put the fork down.” Her feelings were that people with weight issues are acting irresponsibly, are in denial, and need to hold themselves accountable for getting healthier.It was interesting to hear her talk, knowing what I do about her own rocky history with self-love and acceptance. Since I’ve known her, she has struggled to stay rail thin, believing that a size 8 is fat. Part of me knew that in lashing out against obesity she was waging a war against herself. She doesn’t feel like she’s good enough in certain parts of her life, and therefore spouts off toward those who remind her of what she fears most. I think all of us can relate on some level. I believe we all have those people who metaphorically remind us of the parts of ourselves we don’t want to face. It’s like they hold a mirror up to us when we come into contact with them and force us to stare down the parts of ourselves we’re revolted by. For me, it used to be wealthy people, since I came from a fairly “broke” family. Still other times, it’s been a totally different subset depending on what issues I’m working through.

Back to our discussion, though. As I listened to my friend talk about obese people, something bigger jumped out at me. My personal experience was telling me that a lot of people’s weight issues - whether they’re too fat or too thin - come from deep-seated unhappiness. When we’re not at peace, our emotional unrest takes shape as something we can see. Whatever we’re feeling on the inside that’s not consciously expressed will find its own expression, often through our bodies. Louise Hay, founder of Hay House Publishing and author of dozens of self-help and spiritual books, wrote about this in “You Can Heal Your Life.” She purports that we create every so-called illness/condition in our body. She writes, “The body, like everything else in life, is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. The body is always talking to us…Every cell within your body responds to every single thought you think and every word you speak. Continuous modes of thinking and speaking produce body behaviors and postures and ‘eases’ or dis-eases.”

If obesity or anorexia, in even a small number of cases then, comes from rejection of the self (self-loathing), as Louise Hay purports, it makes sense that love could certainly help.

However, our society definitely does not express love toward overweight people. Instead, in many cases, we outwardly reject them, as my friend was doing.

I can say from experience that when I was my most miserable in life, my emotional distress manifested as an eating disorder. I could not consciously fathom the depths of what I was feeling at the time (self-loathing and 100% non-acceptance). All I knew is that I hurt. I quelled this hurt by eating. When I ate too much, my conscious mind would kick in and say, “You idiot! If you keep eating all this food, you’ll gain weight and no one will ever love you.” So then I’d purge what I’d eaten, which only gave temporary relief. Little did I know that the source of my suffering ran much deeper than the food I ate or the process I went through to rid myself of it. At my most basic level, I simply felt unlovable.

Simply?!!

I say simply because once I learned that my issues with food (and weight) revolved around self-love and acceptance, it became infinitely easier to heal them. A doctor who doesn’t know what ails his patient will have a tough time curing him. So it was with me. And so it is, I can imagine, with many others in this world who struggle with their weight, food, and/or body issues.

So to go back to what I was saying before, when I heard my friend rejecting people with weight issues, I tried to explain to her that I felt they needed her love, not her judgment. Rather than pointing her finger and shaming them, I told her I thought she needed to practice love. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” The only thing that can change any of the hurt in this world is love. First, though, we have to recognize that a lot of what we see or think of as problems (obesity, anorexia, alcoholism, gambling, drug addictions) are many times manifestations of someone’s pain. How can we end that pain? Through love. We need to show everyone love; not just the people we like or approve of, but everyone.

If we can begin to move in this direction - loving rather than rejecting - we may start to see a shift in the world. At the very least, if we can move in this direction for ourselves (by loving and approving of who we are, as we are), we’ll start experiencing a quiet revolution.