By: Erin Olivo Ph.D / Source: Psychology Today

Fear is an emotion that many people try to avoid because it makes you feel uncomfortable. But did you know that fear can also motivate you?

I play a game on my iPad where you shoot different colored balls at rows of other colored balls, and when you match up the colors, you clear the lines.

I could zip through the first three rounds no problem but I couldn’t seem to ever make it past the fourth round.

It was so frustrating that every time I tried, I failed. I started getting really tense and anxious each time as I began the fourth round—and that’s when I was hooked.

The challenge of getting to the next level and the fear of not getting to that level kept me motivated. And when I finally mastered the fourth round it felt like acing my driver’s test when I was 16-years-old.

Now of course, the bigger the stakes, the harder it is to hold on to this idea of fear and frustration being motivating. However, the things in life that you’re afraid of and that make you feel vulnerable are often the most important to you.

When you face your fear and allow yourself to feel vulnerable, whatever you’re trying to achieve will bring true meaning and joy to your life. Is there anything you aren’t facing right now because your fear is holding you back?

Perhaps you aren’t applying for that better job because you think you don’t have the experience or you don’t think you can handle the anxiety of interviewing. (Read this post (link is external) about how to achieve your goals).

Maybe you aren’t leaving that “perfectly fine, but really going nowhere” relationship because you’re afraid that you won’t find a better partner.

Or perhaps you find that you don’t share how you’re really feeling or thinking because you’re afraid that you’ll be judged for it.

If any of these sounds familiar, give these three strategies a try and face your biggest fears head on!

Visualize

Picture yourself doing the thing you fear and follow it through to your worst-case scenario. For this visualization you want to really try to see yourself as if you’re watching a movie in your imagination.

Don’t hold back—play out the thing you fear the most and see it all unfold in your mind.

Evaluate

Now evaluate your “worst case scenario” fears:

1. Are they really as bad as you’re imagining? Truly evaluate the probability of your worst fear coming to pass.

2. If you asked your best friend what she thought of your worst-case scenario what would she say?

3. Are you overlooking any strengths you have or positives in the situation that would change your evaluation?

4. Can you plan ahead and problem solve any of the potential challenges or obstacles?

Visualize Again

This time, picture yourself doing the thing you fear but visualize it as if you got a magical advanced warning of exactly what might happen. Now you have the ability to stay calm and handle it all with grace, self-compassion and wisdom.

Watch yourself as you cope with your fear and skillfully manage any downsides that come up. You’ve just rehearsed living the situation in Wise Mind, which is the goal of Wise Mind Living (link is external).

If you feel you need to work through any other scenarios, go back and do the evaluation and visualization again. And when you’re ready, jump in and get the ball rolling in real life!

As Eleanor Roosevelt so eloquently said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”

Source: Body Mind Soul Spirit

Of the many problems we face today, some are natural calamities and must be accepted and faced with equanimity. Others, however, are of our own making, created by misunderstanding, and can be corrected.

One such type arises from the conflict of ideologies, political or religious, when people fight each other for petty ends, losing sight of the basic humanity that binds us all together as a single human family.

We must remember that the different religions, ideologies, and political systems of the world are meant for human beings to achieve happiness.

We must not lose sight of this fundamental goal and at no time should we place means above ends; the supremacy of humanity over matter and ideology must always be maintained.

By far the greatest single danger facing humankind – in fact, all living beings on our planet – is the threat of nuclear destruction.

I need not elaborate on this danger, but I would like to appeal to all the leaders of the nuclear powers who literally hold the future of the world in their hands, to the scientists and technicians who continue to create these awesome weapons of destruction.

And to all the people at large who are in a position to influence their leaders: I appeal to them to exercise their sanity and begin to work at dismantling and destroying all nuclear weapons.

We know that in the event of a nuclear war there will be no victors because there will be no survivors! Is it not frightening just to contemplate such inhuman and heartless destruction?

And, is it not logical that we should remove the cause for our own destruction when we know the cause and have both the time and the means to do so?

Often we cannot overcome our problems because we either do not know the cause or, if we understand it, do not have the means to remove it. This is not the case with the nuclear threat. ~ Dalai Lama

At the turn of this century, the Dalai Lama issued the following eighteen rules for living.

Rule 1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

Rule 2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson

Rule 3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions.

Rule 4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

Rule 5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

Rule 6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

Rule 7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

Rule 8. Spend some time alone every day.

Rule 9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

Rule 10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Rule 11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

Rule 12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

Rule 13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

Rule 14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

Rule 15. Be gentle with the earth.

Rule 16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

Rule 17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

Rule 18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

By: Rea Nolan Martin / Source: Awaken

My husband has been lugging a hardy split-leaf philodendron state to state, house to house since 1975.

We call it the monster, because no matter how much we ignore it, it refuses to die, and worse, seems to nearly double its foliage every year. Since we’ve recently downsized, there’s little room in our home for such grandiosity.

At earliest sign of spring the monster is dragged outdoors to the patio where Mother Nature nurtures it at her whim. Since it unfailingly thrives, we reluctantly drag it back in at first frost.

It had grown so much by the end of summer 2014 that my husband decided to cut it in half. Instead of tossing the offshoot into the river at my suggestion, he secretly potted it and presented it to me as a gift.

“You must be kidding,” I said. “We barely have room for the mother.”

“Let’s just put it in the bedroom and see what happens,” he said. “Maybe it won’t grow.”

He is such an enabler.

Conducting a quick tour of the bedroom, anyone could see there was no room for a plant with this much ambition. Alas, he found a dark corner behind the door of the master bath next to the tub.

“This will do until spring,” he said, plopping it down. I watched helplessly, hoping the monster clone would hate it there, wither and die.

But no such luck.

Less than a week later, leaf after giant, brand new, spring-green leaf shot three feet up and unfurled in a mocking fashion. As upset as I was, I couldn’t help but admire the core strength and bodacious vitality of this invader — just the self-confidence!

Soon I would be climbing around it to get into the tub. As the weeks wore on, I began to feel a certain weird intimacy with it that messed with my conscience.

I could feel myself mentally backtracking on my scheme to kill it with malign neglect. Guilt unfurled in the pit of my stomach with each new leaf, and three weeks in, I broke down and watered it.

The following week during a blizzard, I opened the slats of the plantation shutters behind the tub to create enough light to apply my makeup. The slats were generally left closed for privacy reasons, but I figured on such a dark, blustery day, no one was likely to stop by.

I left them open. Later on when I reentered the room, I could see that every new leaf of the monster clone had traveled intentionally toward the window, bending dramatically to reach the light between the slats.

I was in awe. This thing was alive in a way I hadn’t considered. It seemed to possess not the passive sort of awareness we tend to ascribe to the plant kingdom, but an active, opportunistic intelligence.

I realized then that on the most fundamental level my needs and the needs of this goliath were the same.

We both sought light.

This plant’s stubborn determination to stop at nothing to express itself has had a surprising effect on me. In a way, it’s helped me to expand my own horizons.

Gradually backing down from my former bias, I was able to appreciate so much about my cellmate, like its wildly verdant vitality against the backdrop of winter desolation. Its survival instinct alone staggered me.

Over the years (and especially this last year) I’ve learned that the more we evolve into our authentic selves, the greater our connection to the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms that surround us.

Attuning ourselves to higher purpose, we resonate with the elements of nature that have been placed in our care. (Everything has been put in our care.)

The more we evolve, the more we understand that all living thing are imbued with the breath of creation. This unwanted stepchild of a plant exchanged breath with me — my carbon dioxide for its oxygen. Ultimately, I was at its mercy as much as it was at mine.

What did I learn from my interloper? Four things I can think of offhand:

1) Be yourself unashamedly.

2) Be patient with your caretakers.

3) Thrive where you’re planted.

4) Always move into the light.

Sometimes you have to come face-to-face in a tight spot with a big obstacle before you figure out its lesson. It’s nearly spring now, time to drag it back out to the patio. I wonder if I will.

By: Gilbert Ross / Source: Spirit Science and Metaphysics

The more I ponder about life, the more I continue to come to one solid realization: The biggest curse and predicament of modern Man is forgetfulness.

Like a creeping malaise, forgetfulness has seeped through all of Man’s being and doing. Individually, collectively, historically or culturally, we are spellbound to forget.

We haven’t only forgot our past but also our place in the present and our responsibility of the future.

On a personal level, our ego-based state of consciousness is on a mission to keep us in this state of forgetfulness – to break the link to our being as a whole and to the interconnected web of life and universal consciousness.

On a collective level, this forgetfulness is perpetuated and reinforced by social and cultural means – mainly by being tranced into a reality of unconscious consumerism, inauthentic lifestyles and a materialistic mindset.

The brighter side of it is that we all have the chance to re-member and re-connect to ourselves and the universe at large. The power of remembering is at the center of the spiritual path to self-discovery and realization.

Here is a list of what I believe we have forgotten, or more importantly, a list of things to remember:

1) We forgot our place in the natural world

In the last couple of hundred years we have detached ourselves from nature. We have exploited, ravaged, consumed and attempted to control nature to appease our greed driven by self-absorbed madness.

We tried to distance ourselves from the natural circle of life. We forgot how to listen to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth – its signs and languages. We forgot to follow nature’s path and live in balance with it.

2) We forgot our connection to life and the cosmos

By detaching ourselves from nature, we forgot that we are deeply connected to it and to the cycles of the universe. Some tribes on the outskirts of ‘civilisation’, and who still follow ancestral ways, have preserved this connection with respect and reverence.

We, on the other hand have instilled a sense of separateness which drove us out of balance and in dis-ease. We forgot how all consciousness is interconnected and weaved into a delicate and beautiful dance.

3) We forgot our ancient wisdom

We forgot our ancestral wisdom. In the quest to gain scientific knowledge through the rationalization of our mind, we forgot the wisdom through the opening of our heart.

We forgot the ancient stories and folk wisdom that was handed down from from seers and wise men of antiquity who lived in harmony with the universe.

4) We forgot our path and our dreams

By stirring away from our inner path we forgot to dream the dream of life. More importantly we forgot how to awake in that dream and see our true nature as co-creators of life – as the dreamers.

We forgot that we have the power to weave dreams and use our power of intention to direct those dreams into manifestation.

5) We forgot our purpose

With too much chatter, noise and distraction in this dense reality we forgot what we came here to do. We forgot our purpose. We are caught in the mass trance of fabricated consensual reality.

We lost sight of our authenticity, that inner spark that drives us towards our happiness and self-realization. We forgot that we are here to be realized as spiritual beings embodied in a physical form and embedded in a congenial universe.

6) We forgot that everything is Love

This is perhaps the deepest mystery of all that only some seers came to understand it as an all-embracing truth. That truth however is hidden somewhere deep inside of us.

We knew it at some point but have lost touch with it. We forgot that everything is ultimately energy and consciousness and that love is the fundamental fabric of existence that runs through all energy and consciousness.

7) We forgot to Forgive

By being made to believe that we are separate and disconnected from the others and from everything else, we forgot to forgive.

In its deepest sense forgiveness is the act of reminding ourselves that we are one with everyone and everything and that there is no victim or perpetrator. It’s just all of us together moving together in a dynamic web we call life.

8) We forgot to be Free

Remind yourself one thing everyday: You were made to be free.

We were born and raised in a ‘reality’ where freedom is only a concept. We were bound to the shackles of fear, misconceptions, false ideologies, material reward and held ransom to rules and laws laid down to safeguard the interest of the few.

We were made to forget that we are free agents of change. We are free to be who we are without fear or guilt.

9) We forgot our real power

Living in fear has made us forget how powerful we are. We forgot the massive power of our will and intention to change our reality. We have been tranced into sleepwalking and following the ready made signs like automatons.

10) We forgot our lessons from history

If there is something that history has taught us is how fast we are at forgetting our lessons. Time and time again we keep on repeating the same mistakes, stuck in the same patterns of greed and self-destruction.

We cannot be blamed individually for the mistakes done by humanity in the past but we are responsible as individuals to to remind ourselves of the past mistakes and pass it on to the collective psyche.

11) We forgot to be simple

Human life got more complex and complicated. We are seduced by the glitter of more and not by the power of less. We forgot to be simple and the meaning of simplicity.

Life is simple really. Simplicity means discarding all the inessential stuff and ideas that clutter the view to our life purpose and the other truths we have forgotten.

12) We forgot to trust, believe and wonder

We lost our enchantment with the world. We forgot to be wondered by the miracle of life. We do not stand in awe at the majesty of it all anymore.

Our skepticism and cynical view of the world has made us lose trust in ourselves and the magic of the universe. We forgot how to believe. This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all. It weakened our spirit and impoverished our soul.

Hopefully we can remember to embrace our unity and reconnect with the simple wisdom of ancient cultures, because our world needs us to more than ever. Let us remember we have held the secret to life all along.