If you are not living in love, then you are living closer to fear. To move more quickly toward love the most beneficial thing you can do is pay attention to what you are feeling.
Overcoming the Spirit of Fear
It is important to take a moment here to explain how your feelings can guide you in moving away from fear and closer to love. Your feelings or emotions are on a continuum, so I have created a feelings/emotions chart to help explain this point.
The chart above shows how the spectrum of your feelings are either closer to the side of love or closer to the side of fear. All emotions or feelings are either fear- or love-based.
My suggestion to you is to take some time to be alone and away from your normal day-to-day routine. Consider it time off for self-care. Spend time being still and quiet and listen to your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You can quiet your mind through meditation, yoga, exercise, or just breathing. We often forget to do this very basic and necessary life-giving thing.
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.” Thich Nhat Hanh
Once you are more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions you can start practicing a simple technique to help you move closer to love. You have too many thoughts in a day to keep track of them, but you can focus on how you’re feeling. If you aren’t feeling good, then you need to go back and think about what you’ve been thinking and change those thoughts. Gandhi said, “A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes.”
There are many ways to quickly shift your thoughts from fear-based thoughts to thoughts that will head you toward love. I will give one example here that works no matter how busy you are. Find an anchoring thought. An anchoring thought is a thought that always makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over. You could think about a pet, a place you have visited and loved, the birth of your child. Just pick a thought and use it whenever you feel yourself spiraling down and away from Love. Your anchoring thought should bring up a purely joyful feeling when you think about it. This anchoring thought then can be used as a quick tool to redirect you towards love, especially when you’re in a tight spot.
Let’s use work as an example. Lots of distractions lead you to feel negative emotions. Focus on your anchoring thought — even if only for a moment. You will return to a better feeling place. The anchoring thought results in a powerful positive response turning you in the right direction in an instant. An anchoring thought is like carrying a magic bullet with you all the time, wherever you are. Similar to carrying a gratitude stone or coin in your pocket, the anchoring thought just needs to be pulled out to remind you of all for which you are grateful.
The above is just one tool to use to move closer to love. Stay tuned for more steps to take to move away from fear and toward love.
Until next time,
Susan
In The Journey from Fear to Love Is Shorter Than You Think, Goudy describes the awakening into life that finally freed her from the mental, physical, and spiritual chains of her past. A memoir written from a spiritual point of view, this book is sprinkled with self-help tips that will give readers the tools they need to get “present and focused” and to take an honest look at what they are or are not doing to create the lives they currently live.
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