Let's face it. There are only two ways to approach life. You either honor the fears in your life, or you love your life. You see, the opposite of fear is love. If you honor the fears in your life, these 5 fear based emotions will destroy you. What do you honor?
1. Anger. Do you know anyone that is always angry? These people are angry at everyone. They are angry at their spouse, angry at their children, angry at their co-workers, angry at the traffic, angry at the long lines they are standing in, angry, angry, angry.
I know a few people like that, do you? Have you ever thought to yourself, 'I wonder why that person is so angry?'
I know I have. One person in particular comes to mind. With this particular person, my opinion is that this anger derives from feeling a lack of control. I was always taught that if you have a need to be in control, then you are out of control.
But make no mistake, anger definitely comes from living in fear. Maybe that person is fearful of losing a business, or losing an income, or losing a person in their life, or whatever.
Read: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Revised and Expanded): The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems
2. Jealousy. Aah, the 'ole jealousy emotion. This is by far the biggest destroyer of them all. Excuse me here, but I have to relate this fear based emotion to relationships, more specifically a sexual based relationship. After all, the most powerful emotion since the beginning of mankind is sex.
If you suffer from severe jealousy of a spouse or partner, you need to take a closer look at yourself. To overcome jealousy you have to overcome your own shortcomings. The way I look at it, jealousy is a fear of being out of control. You can't control if someone cheats in a relationship anyway, if they are going to cheat you can't stop it, so don't fret it. And again, a need to be in control means you are out of control.
3. Resentment. Carrying around resentment, in my opinion, comes from a failure to communicate and/or express your expectations of another. Once again, I know a particular person that carries around loads of resentment for family members. This person expects certain business family members to perform certain tasks, and when they fall short, resentment explodes. The fact of the matter is that this family member that falls short of expectations doesn't even know that task or tasks was expected of them in the first place. A classic case of miscommunication.
Resentment is totally created by the person carrying it. It takes loads of energy to carry around resentment. Refocus that energy in a focus, productive way and just let go of this crippling emotion.
4. Anxiety. We all have felt this type of emotion in some way, shape, form or fashion. Feeling anxious begins at an early age. You are anxious because you don't want to be late for school, or you don't want to miss the bus, or you have to be home at a certain time, or a certain project is approaching a deadline, and on and on.
Feeling anxious, in my opinion, results from trying to meet certain expectations of others. To relieve this emotion, simply replace your expectation or the expectations of others, with an aspiration. You simply aspire to do your best. You aspire to be on time. You aspire to perform at your highest level. When you aspire and not expect you are not disappointed, and your anxiety will fade.
5. Insecurity. The emotion of feeling insecure affects millions. Feeling insecure in your relationships, your finances, your marriage, your job, etc. A lack of self-esteem combined with a poor self-image is a major factor in feeling insecure. How do you overcome feeling insecure? My rule of thumb was always 'just go to work'. Work hard, aspire to do your best, and let the chips fall where they may. When you have a 'hard work attitude' combined with an aspiration to do your best, you self-image will increase dramatically.
Do you suffer from any of these 5 fear based emotions? Remember, the opposite of fear is love. Love casts out fear. So, try loving more and letting go of fear. You will see a dramatic effect in your life and your business.
In preparation for the new season of National Geographic's Brain Games, their producers asked me to participate in a virtual roundtable around this thought-provoking question:
"Do you think individuals can train their brain to respond in a particular way to certain situations, or do you think our brain's innate "startle response" is too hardwired to alter?"
My short answer: Yes, we can train our brains.
My long answer: Not only we can, but we SHOULD train our brains to respond in particular ways to certain situations. That's why we have a human brain to begin with...
At the core, the question above goes back to the old "Nature vs. nurture" debate. It's pretty clear by now that both matter. As the growing field of epigenetics has shown, genes and lifestyles interact with each other.
The idea that we are genetically "hardwired" for many behaviors is deeply misleading. Yes, we are born with many predispositions, but how those are expressed depend on our lifelong experiences, thoughts, feelings and decisions. We are ALWAYS training our brains, for good or for bad.
The range of possibility--while certainly not unlimited--is much larger than previously thought. The new fundamental understanding is "cells that fire together wire together." The brain never stops changing through learning (this is called "brain plasticity"). And the brain, and the mind that emerges from it, is of course the driver of behavior.
The Brain Games TV program explores multiple examples of how learning changes your brain, such as what happens to the brains of taxi drivers, musicians and experienced meditators...including how brain training can take over the innate "startle response" and others.
Why does this matter? Why SHOULD we figure out ways to better train our brains and harness our human potential?
Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit Oslo's Nobel Peace Center. Exposed to so many inspiring stories by Prize Winners, it struck me what a beautiful example they provide of our power to transcend our genes and even our "memes" (cultural and environmental influences, as coined by biologist Richard Dawkins).
See this powerful paragraph by Dawkins, in his influential book The Selfish Gene:
"The point I am making now is that, even if we look on the dark side and assume that individual man is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight-our capacity to simulate the future in imagination- could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the blind replicators. We have at least the mental equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests rather than merely our short-term ones...We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism-something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machine and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."
Please notice these fragments...
-- "conscious foresight-our capacity to simulate the future in imagination
-- "our "mental equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests rather than merely our short-term ones"
-- "ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism"
What if we can train and expand that "mental equipment"? What if we are witnessing the birth of a new "brain fitness" culture and toolkit, combining old meditative and cognitive techniques with new digital platforms, to help us improve imagination, working memory, emotional self-regulation, altruism, and more?
Shouldn't we find ways to adopt them, in our schools, our workplaces, our lives, and become better and happier human beings?
In my mind, that's the real brain game. To find ways to harness our brain's lifelong neurogenesis (creation of new neurons) and neuroplasticity (how the brain changes itself responding to experience) to lead happier, fuller lives.
by #SharpBrains
