If only we’d learned how to harness and ride rather than hunt
and kill the butterflies that live in the gut of every person who
strives to create something extraordinary from nothing.
— JONATHAN FIELDS
In June 2013, I was on my book tour for Mind Over Medicine, driving in a borrowed minivan from Chicago to an event in Indiana, where I was scheduled to speak to 300 cancer patients. I was tooling along on the freeway at 65 miles per hour, listening to music, feeling happy and calm, grateful for the opportunity to do work I love, enjoying the present moment. If I had been able to monitor my nervous system, I suspect it would have registered a relaxation response, with my parasympathetic nervous system dominating and my natural self-healing mechanisms doing their thing.
Then, in a split second, from out of nowhere, some unidentified piece of metal tore off another car and came flying right at the minivan. The unexpected road debris punctured both tires on the left side of the vehicle, causing it to list to the left, as if it might flip over.
Fear flooded through me, and I felt the rush of electric warmth as my fight-or-flight responses were triggered. If I had been hooked up to monitors, surely researchers would have been able to measure high levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, and they would have noted that my heart and respiratory rate increased, my pupils dilated, my blood glucose levels spiked, and blood got shunted to my large muscle groups, giving me strength and fueling my ability to quickly maneuver the disabled minivan off the crowded freeway, where my life really was at risk.
A surge of energy and focused attention helped me grip the wheel and bring the car safely to the shoulder of the highway without getting hit or hitting somebody else. My body was out of danger at that point, so in an ideal world, researchers monitoring me would have noticed that, after 90 seconds, my stress hormone levels would start to drop, my vital signs would stabilize, and my nervous system would return to homeostasis with the parasympathetic nervous system in charge.
But alas, that isn’t what happened. As I sat there, trembling from the rush of epinephrine coursing through my body, my imagination went nuts and my mind began to generate all the things that might go wrong now.
Here’s a replay of what went on in my mind:
I’m going to miss my lecture and everyone’s going to be upset at me. I’ll disappoint the event planner and all those cancer patients who will be waiting for me to appear on stage. The friend I borrowed the car from is going to be angry with me for puncturing her tires and leaving her car stranded. Everyone is going to think I’m untrustworthy and unreliable. I don’t even know who to call, since my purse was stolen in Miami and with it, my AAA card. I’m going to wind up stranded on this highway all night, in the freezing cold with no heat and no gas. I might even get attacked by some crazy person taking advantage of me in my vulnerable state. Plus, nobody is ever going to ask me to speak at an event like this again.
The first wave of fear that rushed through me was what I’ve defined as “true fear” because it’s the kind of fear that demands action and can help save your life. When the car was out of control and I was trying to get it safely off the road, my life really was in danger, and my stress response was appropriate. But the secondary fears that came up once I was safe were all what I call “false fear.” These fears were just stories I made up in my mind, stemming from imaginary concerns that might or might not come to pass. Were these imaginary fears helpful? Were they going to help me avoid negative outcomes? No. There was nothing I could do to change the fact that I was stranded on the side of the road with 300 people anticipating my arrival in an auditorium 50 miles away. While the true fear that fueled my safe exit from the highway protected me, the false fear thoughts only kept me stuck in stress response. When you’re in that state, it’s nearly impossible to creatively problem solve. You’re too busy trying to outrun danger to anticipate potential challenges in the future and calmly brainstorm solutions. And we’ve already seen how repetitive stress responses can harm your health in any number of ways.
Because false fear spirals like the one I experienced often happen unconsciously, I wasn’t even aware at first of how one true fear that saved my life had resulted in a situation that triggered a dozen false fears. Once I realized what was happening, I took a moment to practice a brief relaxation response meditation so I could calm down my nervous system and allow it to reboot. This practice took me a few extra moments, which meant I was that much closer to missing my speaking appearance. But calming my nervous system was essential if I was going to critically assess the situation and focus my imagination on coming up with creative solutions, rather than dreaming up imaginary negative outcomes.
From this relaxed state, I was able to track down the AAA phone number and call a tow truck. I also realized I could call my friend and the event coordinator to see if either of them were available to help me out. My friend called her husband and he got in the car to meet me in Indiana, so he could oversee the car repair while I focused on getting to my speech. Once I had made my phone calls, it took another hour for the tow truck to arrive—more time to chill out and meditate, since there was nothing else I could do to hasten the process. If I kept breathing and focusing on the present moment, I could fend off false fear. But the minute I started thinking about the future, I got scared again. Because I knew I had already done everything within my power to get to my talk on time, I kept having to remind myself to calm down. I felt less afraid when I was able to stay mindfully in the moment and surrender control of the situation to something larger than me.
Finally, the tow truck arrived. The driver was a sweet, burly guy who smiled at me with kind eyes when I prattled on about what had just happened. “Climb in, darlin’,” he said.
After dropping the disabled car off at the garage where my friend’s husband was waiting, he said, “Don’t you have a speech to get to?” Smiling, he told me his shift was over and offered to drive a half hour out of his way to take me to the performing arts center. I felt a rush of relief.
On the way to my event, the guy I nicknamed “Tow Truck Angel” asked what I was going to talk about, and I told him I was giving a lecture to cancer patients about how to optimize your chance for cure. Tow Truck Angel got teary and started telling me about his father, his best friend, whom he’d seen every single day until he died five years earlier of metastatic cancer. Tow Truck Angel showed me a clipboard adorned with photos of the Ford Mustang he and his father had built together before he died. He said, “I loved my dad so much.”
He delivered me right to the door of the performing arts center, just in time for me to run my fingers through my roadside hair and walk up on stage fully relaxed. Not one of my false fears came true. I wound up telling my story to the audience, and the story of how I got there helped me demonstrate the very point I was trying to make with my talk: that the stress response triggered when my life was in danger was protective, while all the stress responses triggered by my false fears only caused unnecessary suffering in the moment and put me at risk of potential illness down the road. But those were also the fears pointing me toward things I needed to heal.
TRUE FEAR AND FALSE FEAR
True fear is a survival mechanism meant to protect you. It’s the kind of fear an animal experiences when a predator stalks it, triggering the fight-or-flight response that may save its life. True fear is what you experience when your minivan goes out of control on the interstate. False fear, on the other hand, shows up as worry, anxiety, and ruminations about all the things that could go wrong in an imaginary future. It’s always the finger pointing toward something that needs to be healed in your mind. In this way, both true fear and false fear can help you, if you know how to interpret them in healthy ways.
If someone could wave a magic wand and make you fearless, you probably wouldn’t survive very long. Those who grow up to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder are often fearless as children, and such fearlessness puts them at great risk. Fear is critical to our safety and survival. But the very thing that protects you can go haywire. Although false fear can illuminate areas in your life that need your attention, healthy decisions that guide appropriate behavior never arise from false fear; they arise from intuition and integrity. Learning to discern between true fear and false fear allows you to know which voices in your head you can trust to guide your decisions.
True fear is the fear you feel as you lean over a cliff and realize that one misstep could kill you. It’s the fear you feel when you meet a mountain lion on your hike. It’s the fear you feel when someone holds a gun to your head. It can also be the calm, measured voice in your head that says, This guy is dangerous or I need to go check on the baby right this second. The voice of true fear is meant to keep you safe.
You may think that false fear keeps you safe too. Perhaps you think that worrying about your finances will keep you financially secure. Maybe you think that fear of having your child abducted leads you to take better care of him or her. You might think fear of getting sick keeps you from engaging in reckless behaviors. Maybe you think you’re more likely to quit smoking or eat organic because you’re afraid your health will suffer. Many people think fear is the only thing keeping them from reckless behavior that might threaten their career, their financial stability, their marriage, their quest for excellence, their reputation, their health, and the safety of those they love.
But does false fear really help you behave more responsibly? If you weren’t afraid, would you throw away your money, leave your child unattended, and gorge on sugar? Is false fear what motivates you to make good decisions? And are the stress responses such fears activate worth the risk they cause to your body? No!
By shining a light on what needs to be healed, false fear may indeed play a role in helping you look at your money issues, your bad habits, your parenting challenges, and any dissatisfaction in a relationship. False fear may also alert you when creative problem solving is called for. If you can recognize it as a signal not to let stress responses run amok but to explore the situation further, in a calm, relaxed, intuitive way, false fear may have something to teach you. For example, maybe you’re afraid about getting cancer, even though you just got a clean bill of health from your doctor. Perhaps the fear stems from an intuitive knowing signaling you that your unhealthy lifestyle may be putting you at risk of cancer, even though you don’t have it yet. Maybe your instincts are telling you to stop eating so many processed foods, ditch the cigarettes, and start meditating so your immune system is better able to maintain healthy homeostasis. Or maybe you’re afraid of running out of money, even though there’s plenty of money currently in your bank account. Perhaps this is an alert from your intuition that the reckless way you’ve been spending needs to stop so you can build up more of a buffer in case something unexpected happens to your income stream.
The key is understanding that you don’t need the fear in order to motivate healthy, responsible behavior, although it’s worth paying attention to the fear that may point a finger in the direction you need to be looking. When false fear is in charge, your mind gets smaller. You limit your ability to problem-solve creatively. You’re paralyzed into inaction. But when you’re able to let fear help you expand your consciousness, something opens up, and you’re able to make better decisions.
THE VOICE OF TRUE FEAR
While false fear can be useful for shining a light on areas of your life in need of healing, it’s not false fear that motivates responsible decision making. It’s integrity and intuition. These are what fuel you to take good care of your children, excel at work, commit yourself to healthy relationships, make sound financial decisions, and take care of your body. The voice that your intuition speaks with is the voice of the part of you I call your Inner Pilot Light. When you’re tapped into this inner guidance system, it will steer you to make decisions that are aligned with your truth, and the good news is that fear can point you toward your Inner Pilot Light, if you learn how to bridge the two.
For example, let’s say you find someone’s wallet in the grocery store. Your fear of financial lack might make you think you should pocket the wallet, but if you learn to examine your fears consciously, you’ll see that such fears point toward your growth edges. You may realize that your money fears are tempting you to compromise your integrity, but the more attuned you are to the voice of your Inner Pilot Light, the more likely you are to turn the wallet over to store security in case its owner comes looking for it. On the other hand, if you’re out of touch with your Inner Pilot Light and your fear of financial lack is running the show, you might rationalize why you should keep the wallet and pocket the money. When you’re tuned in to your Inner Pilot Light, this inner guidance system will help you do the right thing.
Keep in mind that the “right thing” might not correspond to society’s rules. Your Inner Pilot Light enforces your soul’s values, not those of society. The law might say that you shouldn’t give money to beggars, but your soul might say you should. Society might say you should stay married until death do you part, but your Inner Pilot Light might steer you otherwise. How can you tell whether you’re being guided by your Inner Pilot Light? Because it will feel good. Not in a short-lived, hedonistic, ego-gratification way, but as deep, nourishing soul-food fulfillment. You’ll be able to tell the difference because following the voice of your Inner Pilot Light leaves you respecting yourself as well as others. Because your Inner Pilot Light can be trusted to protect you, this wise part of you will lead you to take any necessary precautions that will ensure the safety of you and your loved ones, and the good news is that this kind of guidance improves your health, rather than threatening it.
But while your Inner Pilot Light can be trusted to guide you, you’ll have to learn to distinguish this voice from another, often much louder voice in your head, the voice of your Small Self. You could call this part of you your Gremlin, your Inner Lizard, your ego, or the voice of fear itself. I prefer calling it your Small Self because like a child, it is small and can’t be trusted to make healthy, discerning, adult decisions. This is the voice that speaks loudest when fear is running the show, and it keeps you from taking in the useful messages your fear has for you.
YOUR SMALL SELF
Your Small Self doesn’t need your judgment. It needs you to be your bigger self by acknowledging and tending it, rather than rejecting it or dismissing it. Your Small Self tends to be very frightened and is often reacting unconsciously to things that happened in your childhood. But your Small Self also develops in reaction to societal influences, adult traumas, and all of the ways we try to protect our self-image, our limiting beliefs, our relationships, our security, and our worldview. Any unhealed traumas from your past trigger false fears in the present, and your Small Self wants to ensure that you do a good job protecting what it values. This part of you tends to be irrational and psychologically immature. As a result, it chatters away 24/7, filling your mind with false fear thoughts, not because it’s bad, but simply because it’s a childish, hurt, scared, overprotective part of your psyche. As your Small Self adopts all sorts of additional “reasons” to be afraid in its quest to feel safe, you get a full-spectrum barrage of false fear erupting from this voice.
Your Small Self has the ability to imagine all sorts of possible disasters, and it thinks it’s protecting you by warning you about all the impending awful things you should anticipate so your Small Self doesn’t get hurt again. You don’t even have to wait until problems arise before your Small Self starts giving you advice. It’s already anticipating everything that could go wrong before anything bad even happens.
For example, even though I grew up in a happy home environment with two very loving parents, my Small Self grew up seeking approval and feeling like she was never quite good enough, no matter how much she achieved. My parents often reassured me that they loved me regardless of my achievement, but in spite of their reassurances, my Small Self kept trying harder … and harder … and harder, earning straight A’s and being the good girl, going to medical school and graduating at the top of the class, and then becoming a successful author. And yet, for years, it was still never enough. I kept trying harder to win the approval not just of my loved ones, but even of strangers. Although I became aware of and was able to abort this unhealthy pattern in my professional life, it kept on running my personal life. I was trying harder and harder to win the approval of the men in my life, but no matter how much I sacrificed myself to demonstrate my devotion, I wasn’t feeling loved enough in return. It wasn’t the fault of the men. They were doing everything they could to love me. But none of them could heal my childhood wound.
With the help of my therapist, I was able to trace that pain back to my earliest childhood. I discovered that my Small Self was running the show in many of my relationships with men because false fear was driving her. When I tried hard to please a man and didn’t feel appreciated, I would let my Small Self take the wheel and dictate my behavior in ways that my boyfriends perceived as irrational. They were right. My reactions were out of proportion to what was happening in present time because my Small Self was reacting not just to the present, but to old, deep hurt, and as a result, unnecessary stress responses were triggered. Once I was aware of how fear was sabotaging my relationships, I was able to use the realization fear granted me in order to break old patterns. I realized that, when my Small Self felt insecure in a relationship, my childhood fear of rejection led me to cling and grasp, which only pushed healthy people away. Once I recognized the pattern and where it came from, I was able to heal these childhood wounds. My goal now is to let my Inner Pilot Light call the shots in my relationships instead. In this way, my fear was a blessing. It was a billboard announcing to me how I was creating my own suffering and how I might shift those unhealthy patterns. While I still struggle with my Small Self, I’m on my way to healthier relationships, so I experience fewer stress responses in my relationship life, and I’m able to make more courageous decisions.
Unless you’ve done loads of therapy (and maybe even then), your Small Self probably still takes the wheel and dictates your behavior when he or she gets scared. Your Small Self tends to have its favorite scripts, and it repeats them over and over and over again. It’s always worried about abandonment and rejection, because most of us never felt quite secure in the love of our parents, no matter how great Mom and Dad were. It’s always worried about money, even if there’s plenty of money in the bank, because most of us have unhealed childhood issues around financial security; even if we grew up wealthy, we were probably taught that we had to guard against financial loss. Your Small Self likes to tell you that you shouldn’t make yourself vulnerable, because if you trust people, they could break your heart. Your Small Self is insecure, self-conscious, and self-absorbed, always trying to enforce the fear-based rules you learned in childhood. Your Small Self should not be automatically trusted to give you wise counsel, yet many people let this voice rule their lives without even questioning it.
While these are all opportunities to let fear point to areas that need healing in your life, the tricky part is recognizing when your Small Self takes the wheel and acknowledging that it can’t be trusted to make good decisions. If you’re letting your Small Self guide your behavior, you’ve turned over your power to an unreliable advisor—and to make matters worse, your Small Self is unaware of its limitations. It thinks it can handle making all your important decisions, and just to make sure you’re paying attention, it talks to you all the time. To make things even more confusing, this voice likes to take two sides of an argument, so it will steer you first one way, then the other. Your Small Self is constantly playing devil’s advocate to try to ensure safety and certainty.
In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer writes, “You said to your mind, ‘I want everyone to like me. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don’t want anyone to hurt me. I don’t want anything to happen that I don’t like. And I want everything to happen that I do like.’ Then you said, ‘Now mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night.’ And of course your mind said, ‘I’m on the job. I will work on it constantly.’” It’s your Small Self that has given your mind this assignment. What results is a nonstop litany of false fear.
Because you’re not aware that your Small Self is talking, its advice may sound rational, smart, protective, and worthy of implementing when you hear it inside your own mind. But what if someone wrote down the transcript of what your Small Self was saying? You’d probably find that what you’re hearing sounds something like this:
This job sucks. I should quit. My boss doesn’t respect me and keeps stealing my ideas. I deserve a promotion, but Bob got promoted instead of me. Bob is a schmuck who just kisses ass to get ahead. But wow. It worked for Bob. Maybe you should suck up to get ahead too. No, that would make me as much a schmuck as Bob is. I don’t want to be a schmuck. I should just quit my job. But you can’t quit your job. How would you pay the bills, you idiot? Plus, you’d be crazy to quit your job in this economy. Don’t you know how lucky you are to have a job at all when unemployment is this high? You’d be better off sucking up like Bob and trying to get ahead so you don’t have to work with that asshole boss who doesn’t respect you. But Bob is a douche bag. Do I have to become a douche bag to get some respect around here? I really want to be a musician instead. What if I could play my guitar all the time and get paid for it? Now you’re really talking crazy. Nobody gets paid to play the guitar. You think you’re Carlos Santana all of a sudden? You should be grateful you have a good, stable job and a decent paycheck so you can feed the kids. But I hate my job. I should quit …
Underneath the chatter, though, your Small Self is really saying something much simpler—and if you listen, you can hear the fear clearly.
Things were always changing when I was young and unable to protect myself. I felt hurt and scared and insecure, so I want you to promise you’ll keep me safe. I don’t trust you when you think about changing things. My security feels threatened, and this frightens me. If you quit your job, I won’t feel safe, so please don’t change anything, even if you’re unhappy. Listen to me instead and do what I say.
Once you realize what your Small Self is really saying, you can ask yourself what needs to be healed in order to move beyond these false fears. Perhaps you need to heal your tendency to grasp at security so you can find peace amidst change. Whatever it is, your Inner Pilot Light will guide your awareness so you can find peace beyond fear.
As another example of how your Small Self may operate, consider how you may be letting it prattle on about your relationships. Imagine the dictation of your thoughts on this topic.
Mark doesn’t love me. If he loved me, he’d know how much I wanted to go to the movies tonight. But he didn’t ask me to go to the movies. He went out with his friends instead. He loves his guy friends more than he loves me. If he loved me, he’d want to go to the movies with me. Maybe I’m not pretty enough. Maybe if I were prettier, he’d choose me tonight. I should color my hair. Maybe I’d be prettier if I was a blonde. But then I’d have those ugly roots. I hate it when fake blondes have dark roots. Mark would definitely not love me if I had dark roots. I shouldn’t dye my hair blonde. I should work out more and lose weight. Then Mark will take me to the movies because I’ll look more like Alicia if I work out and lose weight. Mark probably likes Alicia more than me. I’ll bet he’s wishing he could take her to the movies tonight instead of being with his friends. I’ll bet he’ll swing by Alicia’s place after they’re done. Maybe they’re having an affair. No, Mark wouldn’t do that to me. He loves me. But if he loved me, he would have taken me to the movies. Maybe he really is having an affair. Maybe he’s not even with his friends right now. I should call him. No, then you’re just being a paranoid girlfriend nagging him when he’s out with his friends. You should play it cool. Act like you don’t really want to go to the movies. You should call Allen. Allen would take you to the movies in a heartbeat. But I don’t love Allen. Yeah, but then Mark might think twice about choosing his friends over you. But I love Mark, not Allen. But Allen’s really into you. Wouldn’t it be nice to get some attention tonight? You should call Allen.
What your Small Self is really saying may be something more like this:
Dad was always criticizing how I looked, and it made me feel unlovable. Whenever anyone looks at another woman, I feel unloved and unlovable. Dad was always going out with his guy friends instead of paying attention to me. Whenever Mark goes out with his friends, I feel rejected.
What needs to be healed here? If you’re not sure, don’t worry. Your Inner Pilot Light knows, and we’re going to be talking more about how you can learn to hear, interpret, and trust this voice.
Keep in mind that ignoring the voice of the Small Self doesn’t help. Pretending you don’t hear it only makes it scream louder. And while it’s one thing to learn from the fears your Small Self is always obsessing about, it’s a whole other thing to let those fears control you. You can see why it makes no sense to act on the immature, irrational advice of this hurt young voice.
If you’ve been taking orders from your Small Self, letting your false fears dictate your actions, don’t beat yourself up. You can’t help it if you’ve been letting your Small Self guide you. You didn’t know any better. But now you do—and you can choose to change the voice you trust to give you advice. It’s not too late to replace this immature advisor with a trustworthy mature one. Your Inner Pilot Light is always standing by, ready to take over as the best guide and counselor you’ve ever had.
COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #1
Let Your Inner Pilot Light Nurture Your Small Self
DRESS REHEARSING TRAGEDY
Human beings are the only species capable of imagining the future, which is both a blessing and a curse. Our ability to imagine and try to predict the future allows us to plan, reason, fantasize, and attempt to create stable lives for ourselves and our families. Imagination is the birthplace of creativity and problem solving.
Imagination allows us to turn problems over in our minds and consider creative solutions. Everything ever created by human beings began as imagination. This marvelous human ability has yielded genius inventions that make our lives easier, such as the wheel, the airplane, and the Internet. It has also birthed scientific advancement, solutions for seemingly impossible dilemmas, and timeless works of art, music, and culture. Even though we are arguably much weaker than other species from a pure strength perspective, we are rarely prey for other species anymore because imagination has allowed us to overcome our inherent vulnerability. Imagination also allows us to learn from past error, experiment with improvements, and avoid future problems. It helps us fend off unnecessary risks to our bodies so we can stay as healthy as possible. It helps us protect our children from harm.
But the very same imagination that has helped us evolve as a species torments us in a way that is unique to humankind. Consider how the imagination causes you to suffer unnecessarily in your love life. You fall in love, and the minute you realize how much you’ve given your heart to another human being, you recognize how vulnerable you are, and your Small Self starts acting up.
When I interviewed Anita, she started talking about the fears that pop up whenever she falls in love. She had been in a relationship with someone she really cared about for over a year, but she noticed how her Small Self was starting to sabotage her love life.
I love him so much I can hardly stand how risky this feels. What if I screw up and he stops loving me and leaves me? What if someone else more attractive than me steals him away? What if he discovers who I really am and sees what a basket case I am? I better keep my guard up. I better not tell him that one thing or he might leave. What if he gets sick? What if he dies? THIS IS TOO RISKY! I CAN’T HANDLE IT IF I LOSE HIM. I should just love him less. I should be prepared for when he leaves me, because I’m sure he will. I shouldn’t let myself feel this much. I better keep my guard up. That way, if I get hurt, I’ll be prepared.
Brené Brown calls this “dress rehearsing tragedy.” It’s as if we hope that, by imagining the worst-case scenario, we will somehow prepare ourselves in case the worst does happen. Sometimes this actually can be an effective fear-reducing strategy, since at times, the looming undefined false fear of an uncertain future can be more terrifying than the specificity of the worst-case scenario. For example, when I was trying to decide whether to quit my job as a doctor, I was afraid of how I would pay the bills for my family. But when I really let myself dress rehearse the worst-case scenario, I realized that the worst thing that could happen was that I would wind up unemployed, bankrupt, and broke, and my family would have to move in with my mother. While this wasn’t an appealing thought, it actually gave me courage because I realized the worst-case scenario wasn’t really so bad.
I never did wind up living with my mother, though I did wind up $200,000 in debt before things turned around for me financially. Knowing that I could move in with my mother if the worst happened made me less frightened and enabled me to take the leap and quit my job. In such cases, dress rehearsing tragedy may ameliorate false fear.
But dress rehearsing tragedy has a grave shadow. In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown shares the following story written by a man in his 60s:
“I used to think the best way to go through life was to expect the worst. That way, if it happened, you were prepared, and if it didn’t happen, you were pleasantly surprised. Then I was in a car accident and my wife was killed. Needless to say, expecting the worst didn’t prepare me at all. And worse, I still grieve for all of those wonderful moments we shared and that I didn’t fully enjoy. My commitment to her is to fully enjoy every moment now. I just wish she was here, now that I know how to do that.”
WHOSE FEAR IS IT?
Where did the frightened voice of your Small Self come from? Why is this voice always spouting off false fears? It’s enforcing a series of rules you learned in childhood, ostensibly to keep you “safe.” Yet the false fears of your Small Self may not even belong to you. They may come from much farther back.
We tend to inherit fear like a virus that gets passed from generation to generation. We unconsciously take on the fears of our parents, often by the age of six, when their “programs” get downloaded into our subconscious minds without our consent. Such patterns can become the operating instructions for your entire life. Common operating instructions passed on from generation to generation include beliefs such as:
You may have inherited these fear-based rules from your parents, they inherited them from theirs, and unless you wake up, you’ll pass your fears along to your own children, usually in the name of keeping them “safe.”
These generational fears can show up as a result of a cultural trauma, such as the Holocaust. Many who have survived such genocides have passed on a fear of persecution, long after the real threat that once triggered true fear in the ancestors is gone. Financial lack represents another common generational fear. For example, those who survived the Great Depression had true fear about starvation and poverty, and they passed on a fear of lack to generations of plenty. This fear may show up as an insatiable need for more and more money, even when there’s a bounty of food on the table and plenty in the bank.
Scientific evidence backs up this idea of generational fear. In a study conducted by Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler at Emory University, published in Nature Neuroscience, mouse parents were exposed to electrical shocks whenever they smelled the scent of cherry blossom and almond. Subsequently, the children and grandchildren of the scared mice startled in response to the scent of cherry blossoms, even though they had never been exposed to the scent or shocked when they smelled it. Offspring of the scared mouse parents also had more neurons that detected the cherry blossom scent than mice whose parents hadn’t been shocked when exposed to that scent. Such fear can be transmitted at the level of the DNA: Researchers found that the DNA in the sperm cells was imprinted with the association between fear and the scent of cherry blossom. A gene that codes for the molecule that detects this odor carried a chemical marker that they postulated may have changed the behavior of the gene.1
The ability to inherit fear from your parents may have developed as a survival instinct, a way to learn what can threaten your life without having to be exposed to the threat, but in modern society, this biological adaptation has a dark side that may explain how seemingly irrational phobias, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder develop—to say nothing of your everyday fears, such as fear of never having enough money or fear of being rejected by those you love.
However, as Bruce Lipton teaches in The Biology of Belief, you are not a victim of your genes. Just because your genes may have been programmed by your ancestors doesn’t mean you’re destined to abide by their rules. Even if your genes reflect the influence of these fears, how your genes express themselves depends on a variety of epigenetic (“above the genes”) forces, which include your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, your physical environment, and the people you surround yourself with. And once you realize that these fears don’t even belong to you, you can start to let go of the past and focus on what’s happening in present time. By letting fear illuminate what’s in need of healing, not just in you, but in your family, you have the potential to heal not only yourself; you can break the chain of generational fear and heal your entire bloodline.
Becoming aware of the fears you’ve inherited from your ancestors isn’t about blaming your ancestors or playing the victim. Your ancestors need your compassion, not your judgment, and you can be grateful that the fears you’ve inherited are helping you heal. Like you, your ancestors inherited these fears from their own predecessors. Awareness allows you to forgive them while reprogramming your subconscious mind, so you are free to act from a new set of operating instructions—the instructions of your Inner Pilot Light.
It’s important to be gentle with your Small Self as it tries to impose its inherited rules and false fears. This part of your psyche needs your compassion too. Rejection only makes your Small Self act up. Instead, offer love. What will unfold is healthy decision making that takes into consideration appropriate precaution without letting false fear run the show. Part Three of this book will offer you tools for changing the unconscious operating instructions that may be guiding your life, healing from generational fear, and learning to trust your Inner Pilot Light. You’ll learn further practical exercises that help you soothe your Small Self so you can discern appropriate action from a place of trust, rather than false fear.
WHAT DOES YOUR FEAR HAVE TO TEACH YOU?
When I first met Dennis Couwenberg at the Institute of Noetic Sciences holiday party, we were introduced several times. Since I was a physician author and he was the owner of an academic scientific publishing company, people suspected we would have a lot in common. They were right. We connected over our shared interest in the intersection of science and spirituality and our curiosity about various forms of anomalous healing, such as energy healing, shamanism, and whatever was happening at John of God. Dennis was recovering from a painful divorce, and his search for relief from the suffering of heartbreak thrust him onto the spiritual path through yoga and meditation. I was several years into my own spiritual journey and also in the middle of a divorce, so we became fast friends. Our initial meetings focused on intellectual matters. We shared with each other books that left our very skeptical scientific cognitive minds baffled and curious, and we’d spend hours hashing over things most scientists dare not touch, like the scientific data on telepathy, reincarnation, and near-death experiences.
Within three weeks of our first meeting, Dennis and I, alongside my friend April, had a spontaneous mystical experience that left all three of us confused, disoriented, ecstatic, and awed. Everything turned topsy-turvy in our lives, and as the fireworks subsided, Dennis and I found ourselves in a strange sort of spiritual partnership, where the purpose of our friendship became clear. We were here to illuminate all of the fears, childhood patterns, and limiting beliefs of the Small Selves that had been unconsciously operating our lives and creating our suffering. I was in the middle of writing this book, and Dennis became one of my willing case studies, demonstrating to me with brave commitment how fear can wake you up if you’re willing to go into the dark places, shine light on them, and use what you find there.
At one point, Dennis had been happy in his job in scientific publishing, but as he grew to better know his own soul’s essence, Dennis realized his business wasn’t aligned with his true nature. This realization scared him. It’s not easy to shift gears mid-career. He was familiar with publishing. He was well connected within the industry. He felt stable and secure in his ability to generate enough revenue to get by within his area of expertise. He dreamed of starting over, but fear kept getting in the way. What would he do if he stopped publishing scientific books? How would he pay the bills?
Dennis wound up taking a sabbatical from his work in order to get some perspective and gain clarity. He was fortunate to be self-employed, with money in the bank to fund a sabbatical, but after six months away from his business, he was watching his savings account dwindle. He was clear that he didn’t want to return to his old job, but he had no idea how he would pay the bills when the money ran out. When Dennis spoke to me about his fears, I asked him to share what the voice in his head was telling him about the option of a career change. Here’s what Dennis’s Small Self was saying:
Who do you think you are? You think you have what it takes to really follow your dreams? You already took six months off and nothing good came of it. You’ve spent enough time acting out. It’s time to come back to earth, cut your losses, and act responsible. Continue what you have been building up so nicely and know how to create money with, even though you don’t like it too much now. This is the only way you know how to make money. There’s no way out. This is how the world works. But what about the other people who follow their dreams, do what they love and get paid for it? I see other people who do this. This time I’m really passionate about doing something else. I want to love my job passionately. I feel really motivated to make it work this time. But doing what I love can’t possibly make me money, Life just does not work like that. It might work for other people, but I’m not like those people. Life doesn’t work for me when it’s pleasurable. If I try to pursue my dream, I’ll wind up broke and nobody will respect me. I will never get out of just scraping by, even if I try really, really hard. But I’m educated. Look how far I’ve come already. I’ve been in a marriage where things were really good, with plenty of money. My ex followed a passion in the artistic world and made plenty of money. I should be able to do this too. But I’m not like my ex. My ex has a different mind-set than me, as well as a supportive family. I’m not optimistic like that, and I don’t have that family safety net. I don’t believe in myself that way. My possibilities are very limited. A complete career change would never work. I will run out of money before any of my dreams come true. But I was the first person in my family to get an education. I started a publishing company that is unusually successful. But that’s not special. Anyone could have done that. That doesn’t mean anything. I will never make it if I try to follow my dream. I don’t have enough drive. I feel energetically drained before I even get started. I don’t know where to start. Unless I go back to my job, I’m going to wind up bankrupt and on the street. Then nobody will love me or respect me, and I’ll never recover. At least if I stay in my publishing job, I’ll be safe, even if I’m not that happy for now.
What was Dennis’s fear trying to teach him? To discern this, first we looked at whether there was any validity to what Dennis’s Small Self feared. He was not in any imminent danger. There was no tiger chasing after him. Nobody was holding a gun to his head. He still had food to eat, a warm place to sleep, and a substantial chunk of change sitting in his bank account. However, while he was safe in the present moment, he had never invested in buying a house, he didn’t have any money in a retirement account, and unless he took some action in order to shore up his dwindling savings account, it was possible that Dennis could run out of money.
Sure, an unexpected business opportunity or an inheritance from a relative he didn’t know he had could show up on his doorstep with no planning on his part. When my friend SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) was broke, she stood on a street corner and said, “Miracle find me now,” and six $100 bills blew down the street and into her hands. (True story.) It was possible that Dennis could continue on his sabbatical, and everything would be just hunky-dory. It was also possible that if he didn’t start focusing his attention again on his business, he might lose the business and with it, his primary revenue stream. If he ran out of money and had no food, no shelter, and nobody else who could give him food or shelter (an unlikely scenario given how many people loved him, including me), then his safety might be threatened. In present time, though, he was able to pay for his basic needs.
After this, I asked Dennis to try and tune in to what his fear might have to say to him. With the guidance of his Inner Pilot Light, could he sense what the fear was telling him about places where he was stuck, or where he needed to grow? He said:
Sometimes I feel my highest self taking over, but when I’m in my smallest self, I feel like I’m at the mercy of this negative current that is bigger than me, like I’m at the will of this animal, and there’s no way of escaping it, no way of taking authority over my own life. I feel trapped in this prison, like I can’t change the course of this trapped life. I feel like it’s dragging me down every time I start to lift myself up, like it’s a dark river pulling me underwater, and I can’t do anything about it. When I’m in this state of mind, I feel very limited, like I can’t create any good ideas and everything seems negative. I feel like a helpless victim, even though I know this kind of thinking isn’t helpful. It completely paralyzes me and makes my world extremely small. Even though I know I’m not really a victim, I don’t know how to get out. In my body, my breathing feels very shallow, like someone is sitting on my chest. I feel this gripping in my stomach. I feel like something is stuck in my throat and wrapped around my neck, like I’m carrying my luggage on my neck and I don’t know how to escape. Because I can’t stand feeling this way, I’ll do anything to feel better, unaware of the motivation. I’ll seek out casual sex. I’ll drink alcohol or eat potato chips. I’ll call my friends, the ones I know will tell me I’m great. I’m always seeking confirmation that I’m worthy of love. Even just going out on the street with this unworthy sensation, I realize I smile at random people, waiting for someone to smile back at me and give me a feeling of worthiness. If someone smiles at me, I’ll feel better for a while. But if they don’t smile back or if they ignore my kind gesture, I can get very angry and aggressive. It pushes all my buttons and I feel so small. There’s this whole other part of me that knows it’s all a lie. I’m trying to figure out how to hear and trust that voice instead. But it’s so hard when this voice is so vicious and so loud.
When Dennis focused all of his attention on the voice of his Small Self, letting it point to what was in need of healing within him, he was finally able to distance himself from the voice and see it for what it was—a critical, self-loathing tyrant without an ounce of optimism, leaving no space at all for any imagination. When false fear is running the show, the creative mind gets paralyzed. Fearful ruminations diminish creativity and shrink your perception of what’s possible. But once the Small Self calms down, it’s easier to tap into the part of the imagination that, instead of focusing on imagined disaster, can imagine creative solutions.
By realizing that he was not this voice, that he was actually the consciousness witnessing this vicious voice, Dennis was able to start to look at his situation more objectively. He realized that it wasn’t unreasonable to start creatively problem solving about how he might generate revenue in the future. He has a publishing background, so he brainstormed how he might utilize what he loves and what he’s good at to generate revenue. He dreamed of using his gifts as a scientist and publisher to explore the intersection of science and spirituality. He also saw himself writing a book, teaching workshops, and engaging in some sort of spiritual healing work. He sensed that learning about the healing arts in Peru might help him learn more about the new career his Inner Pilot Light envisioned. New possibilities were starting to open up where before he had been shut down.
COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #2
What Can Fear Teach You?
1. Make a list of false fears that you’re ruminating on right now.
2. Choose the first fear on your list, close your eyes, and take a moment to tap into your Inner Pilot Light. Breathe deeply and notice any areas of gripping, especially tightness in the belly or chest. Use the breath to breathe space into these areas and see if they loosen up. Expand your belly. Open your heart. Call in whatever it is you trust, whether it’s God, the angels, the Universe, or a deity you identify with, or call on your own Inner Pilot Light directly.
3. Ask what messages of healing your fear is trying to communicate. What might this fear have to teach you about your personal and spiritual growth? Where might you have blind spots in need of illuminating? Where are you stuck? How can this fear be a blessing?
4. Make note of whatever messages come through, since you’ll be addressing these in Part Three of the book.
YOU CAN FREE YOURSELF
It might feel extraordinarily hard to let your fear help heal you when you’re staring at mounting debt, you’re responsible for the needs of your children, your life is threatened because of a health crisis, or you’re losing the love of your life. You may feel like only rich people have the luxury of following their dreams and making brave choices. You may think you’re not smart enough / young enough / attractive enough / wealthy enough / motivated enough / [fill in the blank] enough to do what your heart is guiding you to do. But you’d be mistaken if you believed the lies of your Small Self. Cultivating courage doesn’t require a fat bank account, perfect health, a genius IQ, or being footloose without a spouse or children. Even those who feel most trapped can tap into the kind of courage that gives them the strength to follow their truth, rather than their fear. As part of my research for this book, I had the opportunity to interview hundreds of people just like you who decided to make courageous choices.
Pearl was the broke stay-at-home mother of two young children, with no schooling, no skills, and no job, but she found the courage to end her unhappy marriage, even though she had no idea how she would survive as a single mother with no money. April, whom you’ve met, was a childhood sexual abuse survivor who grew up to be a badass bodyguard, until she decided to abandon the security of her career because she knew it was only making her more afraid. Kevin was governed by the strict rules of a religious cult, frightened of what would happen if he violated the rules and escaped, but he found within himself a fortitude he didn’t know he had and managed to break away. Martha wrote and published a tell-all memoir, exposing the truth about her experience with the Mormon church, even amidst death threats from the church community.
Kathleen was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and her doctor insisted that she undergo a hysterectomy, but everything in Kathleen’s intuition told her she would die if she got the surgery, so she faced enormous fear and decided to decline. Martin, who was working as a pastor in a fundamentalist Christian church, came out of the closet about his homosexuality because he just couldn’t betray his own truth anymore. Brian had been sexually molested as a child, and the abuse had wreaked havoc on his relationships, his sex life, his professional life, and his self-esteem, but he chose to overcome his fears of facing his past and undergo intensive therapy in order to face the beast that was ruining his life so he could finally be happy. Sally had been afraid to stand up for what she believed at work, fearing dismissal if she spoke her truth, but after years of feeling like she was selling her soul, she finally stood up to her boss.
These people don’t have anything you don’t have too. They didn’t have any less fear than you do, and there’s nothing special about them that made them choose courageous action. The voices of their false fears were just as vicious as the voices that tell you you don’t have what it takes to be brave. What you need to understand is that while this voice can awaken you to what needs to be healed in your life, you don’t have to let it run your life anymore. Don’t be one of those people who squanders this one wild and precious life because you’re taking orders from your false fear without letting it heal you. Consider this your official invitation to start trusting your Inner Pilot Light instead.
FIND YOUR STILLNESS
If you’re able to distance yourself from the voice of your Small Self, you’ll find that there’s a place behind that voice that’s very, very still and peaceful. This inner vastness of calm allows you to find your stillness even in the midst of the most chaotic circumstances. In the Find Your Calling teleclass program that Martha Beck, Amy Ahlers, and I teach, Martha leads a guided meditation that has you imagine that you’re in a hurricane just above a turbulent ocean. The wind is whipping, the lightning is striking, the waves are crashing, and you’re getting thrashed around by the turbulence. You then let yourself drop just beneath the surface of the ocean. From this perspective, you’re still crashing around in the waves and you can look up through the surface and see the flashes of lightning, but you’re underwater, so you’re protected from the wind and the noise. If you dive deeper, you can go beyond the movement of the waves, and you can no longer see the flashes of lightning, and things start to get very still. Go deeper still and the ocean starts to get dark and quiet. Keep going, down, down, down until you get to the very bottom of the ocean, where you can settle into the ocean floor like you’re an anchor. From this place in the ocean floor, you can be totally still. Sense your stillness. Feel the inner quiet. Nothing has changed on the surface. The hurricane is still there, with the crashing waves and wind and lightning and noise. But down at the ocean floor, it can’t touch you.
There’s a place inside of you that is just like this ocean floor. Your outside world can be total chaos. Maybe someone you love just died. Maybe you lost your job or got divorced. Maybe you’re filing for bankruptcy or facing a cancer diagnosis. Your world might be falling apart on the outside, triggering all of your false fears. But somewhere inside of yourself, there is a place of stillness you can always access, even if you really do have a gun to your head.
Accessing this place of absolute stillness requires being in the present moment, and in this place of stillness, fear doesn’t exist, not even true fear. When you’re in this state of consciousness, even the death of a loved one—even your own death—doesn’t scare you. You’re so still and so present that you trust that, even if you die, all is well.
If you could rest in this place of stillness, with all of your attention only on the present moment, like The Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle did after his spiritual enlightenment, you would have one version of The Fear Cure. Focusing on what’s happening right now and tuning out your Small Self, rather than projecting into the future or remembering the past, can be a potent courage-cultivating strategy. If your mind is free of thoughts, there’s no false fear. End of story.
Imagine if your mind was simply still. This wouldn’t mean you would lose the capacity for intellectual thought. If you needed to think in order to creatively problem solve, all of your faculties would function fully. But in between cognitive tasks, your mind would quiet down, allowing you to rest in the stillness of the present moment, where peace always lives, even in times of turmoil. The majority of our thoughts focus on fantasizing about what we want, scheming about how to get what we want, fearing what we don’t want, and strategizing about how to avoid what we don’t want. It’s no wonder we don’t feel peaceful! But there’s a whole other way to live if you’re willing to loosen your grip on what you want and create space between you and your fears. When you’re able to stay in present time, focused only on the sensory input of what you currently see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, you’ll find you get a vacation from your thoughts, and you’re likely to experience peace.
While it’s possible to experience this kind of peace as the result of a rapid awakening that brings you into present time instantly, most of us aren’t Eckhart Tolle, at least not yet. For most of us, quieting the mind and becoming fully present is a process that requires awareness of how your Small Self operates. Once you distance yourself enough to notice how the Small Self threatens to spoil your right now, you can refocus your attention on what is happening in the moment and rest in the peace of the present.
COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #3
A Meditation for Presence
This kind of meditation practice grants you insight into how busy the mind can be, helping you come into present time and dissociate from the kinds of thoughts that create unnecessary suffering. With practice, the space between your thoughts increases, and you’re better equipped to be the witness of your Small Self, rather than at its mercy. By learning to take the position of witness to your thoughts, you discover that your thoughts are not YOU. You are the consciousness witnessing your thoughts, but they don’t define you. They’re just the voice of your Small Self. If you identify with them and let them dictate your decisions, you’ll only create your own suffering. But if you can view this stream of thought from the witness position, you can filter out the helpful messages within it and ditch the rest, allowing yourself to relax in the peaceful quiet that arises when the Small Self’s chatter drops into the background.
When you stop focusing on your thoughts about the past and the future, focusing instead on what is happening in present time, you’ll realize that pain is inevitable, but most of your unnecessary suffering is caused by your resistance to what is. If you can just accept whatever is happening in the present moment, without making it wrong or trying to change it, you can be with the pain without spiraling into the suffering. Once you drop the resistance and stop identifying with the stories you make up about the negative events in your life, something loosens, and it’s easier to find peace, even in the midst of painful events.
This “find your stillness” approach to dealing with fear can be sought along the path of many Eastern spiritual practices. A daily meditation practice can bring you deeper into the vastness of your inner stillness, which is a prerequisite to hearing and interpreting the guidance of your Inner Pilot Light, a key part of the Six Steps to Cultivating Courage that you’ll learn in Part Three. Finding your stillness will also help you with what you’ll learn and practice in Part Two of this book, which is all about helping you identify and heal beliefs that may predispose you to letting false fear run the show. As you learn to focus on the awareness of the breath and the body, you are thrust into present time, which helps you move out of the mind and into the now. This Eastern way of dealing with fear may be right up your alley, and you may want to include daily meditation, yoga, the practice of presence, and other such practices in your Prescription for Courage. From this place of stillness, you’ll have the opportunity to shift from a fear-based to a trust-based worldview that guides you to a state of inner peacefulness, rather than inner reactivity and the need to control life. When you can get still, you’ll be able to simply accept, rather than resist, what is. In the place that allows you to accept reality, even when reality isn’t going the way you like, you’ll also find the gateway to your courage. In order to fully activate this courage, you’ll need not only inner stillness but also new, courage-cultivating beliefs that help your Small Self feel calm and safe so you can take brave risks without your Small Self freaking out. By unearthing and healing the root causes of false fear, you will find your brave.
ROOT CAUSES OF FALSE FEAR
I’ve studied fear from a range of perspectives that all inform the work we’re doing in this book, from mystical religious traditions to Western psychology to the lessons of A Course in Miracles, and when I examine fear through the lens of all of these influences, I see that much of our false fear stems from limiting beliefs that make up our worldview. When you’re mindful of the thoughts that drive your decision making, you can make the choice to shift from fear-inducing beliefs that trigger false fear to courage-cultivating beliefs that make you brave. So an essential part of letting fear cure you is examining the thoughts that make you scared so you can shift to thoughts that induce peace and engender courage instead.
All false fear arises from thought, and in my experience with clients and the people I interviewed, as well as in my own experience, almost all false fear thoughts stem from four myths that many of us mistakenly adopt as truth. These fear-inducing limiting beliefs, which I call the Four Fearful Assumptions, represent the dominant worldview of our modern Western culture and lead us to experience a lot of unnecessary suffering. See if any of the following beliefs sound familiar to you.
FOUR FEARFUL ASSUMPTIONS
Uncertainty is unsafe.
I can’t handle losing what I cherish.
It’s a dangerous world.
I am all alone.
The Four Fearful Assumptions are merely thoughts, but your Small Self most likely has adopted these cultural beliefs as gospel truth—as so many of us have. Because we believe we can’t feel safe in the face of uncertainty, we conclude that we must pursue safety, security, and certainty at all costs, even if the cost is our health and happiness. Because we believe we can’t handle losing what we cherish, we try to vigilantly guard against loss, even when doing so makes us cling to what we just can’t keep. Because we grow up believing we live in a dangerous world, often because of what we learned in childhood, we conclude that it’s up to us to ward off poverty, violence, illness, pain, rejection, and abandonment. And because we assume we are separate, distinct individuals navigating this dangerous world alone, the primal survival instincts of our tribal species get triggered and convince us we are vulnerable to injury or death. When this is our dominant worldview, it’s no wonder we wind up feeling very frightened. We simply have too much to lose, and we are not okay with this. Deep down, we’re terrified that we simply cannot handle it if our greatest fears come true.
Yet the Four Fearful Assumptions are relatively recent phenomena in the history of our species. By all measures, primitive human beings used to live in a much more dangerous and uncertain world than we do now. Mothers and children regularly died in childbirth. Everyone and everything was vulnerable to the elements. Living quarters could be easily devastated by natural disasters. Infectious diseases could wipe out a whole tribe. Death and loss were commonplace. People still grieved when they lost what they loved, but they survived and grew from the loss, receiving comfort from the tribal mythology and rituals and communion with the spirit realm, which imbued such loss with meaning and purpose. Their worldview helped them handle the kinds of hardships we can’t even fathom.
Not until the scientific revolution did the driving need for knowledge and certainty overtake our willingness to live in the realm of mythology, metaphor, and mystery. The quest for certainty initially helped us feel safe because we began to understand more about how the world works. This knowledge allowed us some understanding of science, so we no longer believed we were at the whim of uncertain, unexplainable, unpredictable forces, the way indigenous cultures often did. But this craving for certainty came with a dark side. We lost our tolerance for uncertainty and loss, and this led us to conclude that we lived all alone in a dangerous world.
As modern life evolved, we shifted from a culture that perceived ourselves to be intricately interlinked beings in constant communion with nature into a culture where the dominant worldview is that we are separate, distinct, carbon-based life forms whose consciousness exists only in our brains. Indigenous cultures believed everything to be connected—not just all humans or even all animals, but water, the ocean, the mountains, even the weather. Today, we have come to believe that we are connected to nothing, which is one reason the survival of the planet is now at risk. Fortunately, since our culture’s fear-inducing beliefs are just that—beliefs—we can take the opportunity to question our fears and heal our thoughts.
THE FOUR COURAGE-CULTIVATING TRUTHS
So what can we do to transform our relationship with false fear? We can make a conscious choice to replace fearful thoughts with thoughts that comfort, heal, and help us feel safe. To use a simple example, if your thought is I’m not good enough, it’s helpful to recognize that this is just a thought—one that limits you—and ask yourself what might be an alternative to this thought, something to empower and free you instead.
In Loving What Is, Byron Katie teaches “The Work,” which is based on four questions that help you turn around a limiting belief into a more genuine truth. Sometimes the turnaround is an affirmation that is the direct opposite of the limiting belief. For example, the turnaround of I’m not good enough might be I am enough. But often, the turnaround is deeper and more complex than the simple opposite of the limiting belief. When we apply a similar sort of “turnaround” logic to the Four Fearful Assumptions, we can replace these limiting beliefs with a set of empowering beliefs that I call the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths.
FOUR COURAGE-CULTIVATING TRUTHS
Truth #1: Uncertainty is the gateway to possibility.
Truth #2: Loss is natural and can lead to growth.
Truth #3: It’s a purposeful universe.
Truth #4: We are all One.
Making this shift from the Four Fearful Assumptions to the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths is less of a cognitive process and more of an intuitive one. I will offer your cognitive mind evidence that the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths can be trusted, but your cognitive mind will keep trying to talk you out of believing them. Your cognitive mind is not your friend when it comes to letting fear heal you. Although it’s trying to be helpful, when it comes to false fear, your cognitive mind can hurt you more than it can help because it tends to be governed by your Small Self, rather than by your Inner Pilot Light. This is where the intuitive argument comes in. Your Inner Pilot Light governs your intuition, and it already knows that the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths can be trusted. So the real shift happens when you learn to trust this part of you.
The worldview I’ll be presenting to you in the next four chapters is not something I just randomly pulled out of my black doctor’s bag. I’ll be providing your cognitive mind with all the evidence I can find to support this worldview, which is based on the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths. Some of this evidence comes from high-quality clinical trials published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Some comes from the experience of people whose stories have been published in other reputable books. Some evidence comes from the stories of people I’ve interviewed personally, and other evidence is drawn from my own personal experience. In the next four chapters, I will be inviting both your cognitive mind and your intuition to consider embracing these truths, so you can cement your new beliefs into a courage-cultivating worldview that makes you feel safer and braver.
When you believe the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths, you’re on your way to living a more courageous life. Once you come into right relationship with uncertainty, you’re able to face uncertainty with excitement and curiosity, rather than fear. When you accept the inevitability of loss, loss can help you grow. Once you realize you’re always being guided by a Universal Intelligence that’s purposeful, rather than dangerous, you start to trust that everything’s happening for a reason, even if you don’t always understand why. When you really sense that we are all part of a collective consciousness, you stop feeling so cosmically lonely and start realizing we’re all connected, and this helps you become brave enough to live out your life purpose. When you shift from abiding by the Four Fearful Assumptions and start letting the Four Courage-Cultivating Truths guide your actions, you heal yourself and bless the world.