350 I Face My Fears In Order To Know The Beauty Behind Them December 2017 Saturday Week 3

Synergistic Saturdays-#350  December 16 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast I Face My Fears In Order To Know The Beauty Behind Them Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, psychiatrist, or claiming to have the answers that will heal you. I’m only bringing up possibilities of thinking differently in hopes that you heal yourself. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, called Snap Judgement. They usually have someone telling their story…and all of them are well produced and interesting. I was listening to an episode called “Secret Identity.” And in this episode a girl was adopted and named Sarah by a loving family. Sarah later in her life decided she wanted to find her biological parents. She was living in the state of West Virginia and a private investigator had found where her father lived. So she sent a letter to him and was contacted by her uncle first. Her biological family lived in Africa. One interesting part of the story was her father was a chief of a tribe in Sierra Leone which meant that she was a princess. And when she finally made the trek to Africa, they welcomed her with elaborate dancing as tribe members sang, “we are preparing for Sarah.” After the ceremony, her uncle got up and said a few words that Sarah had come home and she can be chief someday if she chose to. Now this whole story sounds like a fairy tale. That you were given up for adoption…but you were adopted by a loving family. And your biological father was a head chief of a huge village…which meant you were royalty and a princess to over 50,000 people. However, the best part about the story is not that she was a princess because of her birth father, but it was how her and her father communicated when they first spoke on the phone. When Sarah’s father called her he said, “Please forgive me, I didn’t know how to find you after you had been put up for adoption. Your name had changed, everything had changed.” And Sarah said, “no, no, no, no…wait a second, please forgive me because I’ve been making you wrong my entire life just to protect myself. And I’m not going to do that anymore.” If you want to know the rest of the story go check out the podcast Snap Judgement and the title of the story is “Secret Identity.” I wanted to relay that by Sarah being willing to look past her fears she was able to find something beautiful on the other side. Now not every problem will work out as perfectly as this one did…but if you are willing to look beyond your fears, even if it doesn’t work out like you planned…something great is happening. We as people essentially make two choices in life. I know I’m simplifying it a bit, but we either go towards what we want or we avoid the things that bring us pain. And when you make it a habit to go towards the things that scare you, the things that are tough…then you are creating a new paradigm in your life. You’re not allowing the things that are hard to stop you. Because if you really think about it, all the things that really scare us, are because they are important. If it wasn’t a big deal to us, we wouldn’t care and it wouldn’t create anxiety for us. And anxiety really is just a choice. I know people will say I have a condition or a disorder that anxiety makes me paralyzed… and while I will agree that that person will become paralyzed…it’s still their choice to become paralyzed. It’s their choice to allow anxiety to take over. And it’s their choice to keep steering away from the things they fear to stay in the places that feel comfortable for them. And this is not a judgement because I’ve been in those places before as well. We have conditioned ourselves how to feel or think about things that make us uncomfortable. If you look at two people who had the same traumatic event happen to them as children, one person could associate pain and suffering from that and have fear that it could happen again. Where the other person could have had issues dealing with it but decided to see it as something unfortunate that happened to them, and now they know the signs to look for and won’t allow the feelings to keep continually paralyzing them…they learn to associate a different emotion. I want you to hear me clearly on this…I am NOT putting a judgement on any person in this situation. Your life is your life, but I do want to bring up the possibility that what you’ve told yourself for far too long may not necessarily be true. So for someone who claims they have anxiety and they can’t do anything about it…they make that their truth. And someone who says I know I don’t like being here, but I will decide to not let my anxiety control me…will make that their truth. We live in a society where we want the quick fix, we want the drug or the procedure to solve the problem for us…and while it may bring relief…it usually is only temporary as you need to keep taking the pills or whatever else you are using to try and heal you. And so you condition yourself, that you need the pill instead of seeing the pill as temporary. You condition yourself to see something else as the answer instead of seeing yourself as being the permanent solution to change yourself. Now I could be wrong, and I’m ok with that because it’s not about me proving a truth to you…it’s about opening ourselves up to see others possibilities. Now I’m getting a little off point here going into anxiety and the pharmaceutical industry. I think everything can have a benefit, but we as a society have become far too dependent on things thinking they will be our answer, when all along we needed to decide to be our own answer. We might have needed the help at first, but we never saw the end result of us being the change. So maybe this is what needs to be asked for you and for myself…what are the crutches we’ve been holding onto that have kept us from moving forward? What are the stories that we’ve told why we can’t be something, do something, or have something? I’ve spent years creating an inner voice that told me about my powerlessness…instead of creating a voice talking about my power. And I won’t get in depth about my bouts with depression and suicidal thoughts when I was younger, but things didn’t change until I became committed to my healing. Things didn’t change until I told myself there was no other way than being focused 100% on finding a way. And I told myself I would go the distance to find my solution and die trying if that was necessary, because I was already dying inside. So, what did I have to lose? And the reason I was truly willing to change from a new way, was because the pain of staying the same was far greater than the pain of moving forward into my fears. And my life isn’t perfect, but who I am… has changed drastically as I’ve healed myself in a way I could’ve never imagined because I was willing to face my fears, to analyze the stories that were keeping me trapped and change them…and to be 100% committed to my healing…because in the end I knew what happiness felt like and I knew I had been there before. I was willing to do anything the right way to create that again…and I believe when you want something bad enough, when you are willing to do the hard work—then the way, will always happen. I am a firm believer in the saying, “when the student is ready, then the teacher will appear.” So whatever you’re struggling with, I want to ask if you are truly willing to be 100% committed to making it yours? Because nothing will ever change if nothing ever changes…and you must be that change…and I believe you must be willing to die of the old self and be willing to do whatever it takes to make it a reality. But that’s hard, and it would mean you would have to change, and changing is scary…but maybe a better question to ask yourself is…is the change scarier than staying where I am? Today’s Personal Commitment:Sometimes milestones or goals in our life aren’t reached by what we’ve allowed ourselves to get comfortable in. So what has kept you comfortable from moving forward? What excuse have you used to keep you in the same place? What story have you been telling that’s kept you fearful and immobile? I think people give up because they have the illusion that change should happen quickly. We see someone doing what we want to, and if it doesn’t happen fast enough for us…well it wasn’t meant to be then. Take for example I heard about how people were being successful in monetizing podcasts. I spent two years telling myself that if I didn’t make money from it then I shouldn’t do something. So last year I decided to put a podcast out regardless if I ever made a cent from it. I thought it would be nice if I made money from it, but my intention wasn’t in making money…it was about putting value out into the world. I had spent the previous two years hem hawing around trying to make things perfect…that I never took action. I have like 15 recorded interviews I haven’t put out to the world.  So last year I decided to stop  letting my fear and the obstacles stop me as I changed my focus to bringing value into the world…not perfecting things or focusing solely on money. I started with something small and asked how I could be consistent with it. And so I decided to do a 5-10 minute daily podcast, to get me moving from where I previously was…being stuck. So what is something that you can focus on for the next year to help you get moving and putting more of your value into the world? Not to make something from it…but because it’s a part of who you are. Maybe it might pay off in the end, but if we focus only on what something can get for us, sometimes we don’t do the things that could be really fulfilling for ourselves. I Face My Fears In Order To Know The Beauty Behind Them     Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together, Personal Development Life Coach- Chris O'Hearn Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247     Music by: - Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. - I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide