We Page 12

  When new hurts arise, deal with them quickly. Notice, Name, Feel, and Release your anger (see page 97) and use what you’ve learned to let go of any residual pain. As you do, hope and optimism will become your travelling companions.

  Courage in the Wider World

  Memories of our lives, of our works, and our deeds will continue in others.

  —ROSA PARKS, 1913–2005, civil rights activist

  When our lives are dominated by resentment, we find ourselves lurching from one upset to the next.

  Open any newspaper, and you can see the consequences of unhealed and unconscious emotional responses playing out in the world at large: brawls, murders, and wars often waged in the name of self-defense but that in reality are the result of emotional wounds accumulating in intolerable feelings of umbrage and impotency.

  Hurt people hurt people. When we’re not healed, we do to others what has been done to us. We react with rage rather than with compassion and insight.

  How much more peaceful would the world be if we each took responsibility for processing our hurt feelings so that we didn’t act them out on others?

  How many more solutions would be found if we let go of our personal need to be right?

  How much more powerful would we be when we engage with others if we harnessed our anger instead of raging about our suffering?

  When we have the courage to let go of our rage and resentment, we discover we are powerful beyond measure.

  Reflection

  Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

  —NORA EPHRON (1941–2012), author, playwright, screenwriter, film director

  If I’m upset by someone or something, I have to be diligent and process the anger or hurt it provokes. If I don’t, I’ll be in danger of acting out my resentment on those I come into contact with. That could be my child, who is nagging me to play while I’m busy, or it could be the shop assistant I snap at because I’m preoccupied.

  Action. I will take responsibility for feeling and releasing my anger safely.

  Affirmation. Today I let go of being right so that I can be happy.

  Principle 4

  TRUST: Living Without Fear

  You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.

  —LEYMAH GBOWEE, Liberian peace activist

  Trust is our antidote to fear. It aligns us with the flow of life—a magnificent energy that guides and directs us so that we can live expansive, happy, and fulfilling lives.

  With trust, life starts to open up. We’re able to embrace opportunities, have fun, and make the most of our time on this earth. Trust fosters cooperation and compassion rather than competition.

  Without trust, we live in fear and anxiety. We doubt ourselves, we doubt others, we worry, we compete, and we try to control outcomes. We live small when we could be living big.

  A miracle is sometimes defined as a change in perspective—a moment when suddenly everything shifts. That’s what trust leads us to: a completely new perspective on our life.

  Choosing Trust over Fear

  The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity,

  —AMELIA EARHART (1897–1937), barrier-breaking aviator

  Trust offers us freedom from fear. But, as with all of WE’s Principles, there is just one thing that’s required from us if we want to experience its magic: willingness.

  To start with, choosing to trust can feel foolish, giddy, and maybe even ridiculous. Trust can seem irrational, illogical, and irresponsible. We want to know what we’re trusting and how it’s going to work.

  But the truth is, you already know how to trust; you’ve been trusting for many years. It isn’t new to you, it’s just that you have been trusting the wrong thing—you’ve been trusting in the negative outcomes that fear tells you are just around the corner.

  When we adopt trust as a spiritual Principle, we do the opposite. Instead of assuming negative outcomes, we assume the best. And, crucially, we accept that we don’t necessarily know what “the best” looks like.

  Often it is only with the value of hindsight that we get to see that what we thought would be disastrous has actually turned out for the best.

  * * *

  Exercise 1: Living Proof

  * * *

  This exercise will strengthen your capacity to trust by showing you that, despite your worst fears, you have been taken care of in the past.

  Close your eyes and breathe in and out deeply at least five times. When you are centered, scan back through your life. Look for situations where you were absolutely sure that something terrible was going to happen, but things actually turned out okay. Maybe you were in an accident that could have killed you. Maybe you had a brush with a serious illness that you survived. Maybe you thought you’d be alone forever but met someone and fell in love. Maybe you took risks with alcohol or drugs and lived to tell the tale.

  Write down in your journal as many unexpectedly good outcomes as you can remember. It’s your proof—when you need it—that things don’t always turn out as you feared. And that even events that seemed catastrophic at the time can still lead to positive outcomes.

  * * *

  When I wound up in treatment for clinical depression, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. I thought my life was over. Now, more than two decades later, I can see that it was actually the best thing that could have happened to me. It was where I was introduced to a spiritual way of living and began the journey back to my true self. Without it, I’m not sure that I would be alive today. So now when something upsetting happens, I try to replace my instinctive response of “How terrible!” with “How interesting,” and then trust that somehow it will all work out.

  —JN

  I feel like I have so many examples throughout my life where my assumption was that things were undoubtedly going to go wrong. There used to be (and on the rare occasion, still is) a bit of catastrophizing. The relationship was going to fall apart. I was going to be fired. The desired event wasn’t going to take place. And yet more often than not, I have looked back and thought, “Actually, thank God that didn’t happen! How things have turned out is so much better for everybody.” What has gradually changed over time as I’ve become more trusting is not that more things have gone the way I’ve wanted them to but that I’ve come to trust that, no matter what happens—even if the relationship does fall apart or the job goes away—I will be okay. More than okay.

  —GA

  Unmasking Fear

  Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression.

  —MARJANE SATRAPI, Iranian-born graphic novelist, illustrator, and film director

  Fear is an interloper. It pretends to be our friend, but, in fact, it plays a highly destructive role in most of our lives, inhibiting us and preventing us from reaching our full potential.

  Of course, fear has a healthy biological function: to keep us safe. It stops us from sticking our hand into a fire, and reminds us not to have unprotected sex or walk in front of fast-moving traffic. The problem is that for many of us, it has ceased to be a tool we use to help us assess real risk and has instead taken control.

  Fear often comes disguised as common sense. It focuses on the future: on what could happen or, more specifically, what could go wrong. When we try to make changes or move outside our comfort zones, fear pipes up with advice such as “What if it doesn’t work out?” or “What if you never meet anyone better?” or “What if you’re not good enough?” It tells us that if we just live a little smaller now, we’ll be a little safer down the line.

  You might think that worrying keeps you safe, but it’s an illusion. It’s like sitting in a rocking chair: it provides constant motion that doesn’t actually get you anywhere. In reality, fear robs us of our sleep, our perspective, and our self-belief.

  None of us can know the future, and yet fear has us in anguish over what it might be like. It can sound convincing, but it peddles
lies. Think of it as an acronym for:

  False

  Evidence

  Appearing

  Real

  When we rely on fear, we undermine ourselves and inflame any underlying self-esteem issues. Fear has us worrying about what other people think. It calls our abilities and decisions into question and makes us doubt ourselves.

  It tries to protect us by preparing us to be disappointed, and it keeps us stalled when we could be moving forward. It persuades us to say no when we should say yes and steals our peace of mind.

  There are plenty of valid reasons for our levels of fear. Many of us have learned to live fearfully from an early age. Perhaps bad things happened, and we now cling to fear to try to prevent them from happening again.

  Or maybe we see the suffering that exists in the world and try vigorously to avoid it for ourselves. Fear can offer the illusion of control, convincing us that if we live small enough, we can prevent bad things from happening.

  The problem is that allowing fear to govern our lives doesn’t work. We can’t control the uncontrollable—no matter how hard we try. Even if we lock ourselves away like modern-day Sleeping Beauties in our apartments instead of towers, there’ll always be a metaphorical spinning wheel somewhere that pricks us.

  * * *

  THE BODY-MIND CONNECTION

  Fear produces a stress reaction in the body: the fight-or-flight response, designed to get us out of immediate physical danger. We can have a similar response when we watch a TV drama or the news or browse the internet; if what we’re seeing makes us fearful, our body becomes flooded by the stress hormone cortisol, even though we are not in any danger at all. Unfortunately, chronic or prolonged circulating cortisol can give rise to health problems such as elevated blood pressure and insomnia. The body-mind connection and its implications to our health is now well established,1 so while it’s important to be an informed citizen where current events are concerned, you also have a responsibility to carefully monitor the diet you feed your mind.

  * * *

  What we focus on grows. The more we focus on possible negative outcomes, the more fearful we become, and, ironically, the more likely they are to happen. Instead of protecting us, our fear often seems to become self-fulfilling. We stay in relationships we should have left for fear that nothing better would come along—and then the relationship falls apart anyway. We overwork and neglect nourishing our personal life to keep our job—and then get made redundant. We play it safe and turn down opportunities, and wonder why we’re lonely, unfulfilled, anxious, and afraid.

  As you saw with WE’s 2nd Principle, acceptance, we can manufacture unnecessary pain by being attached to how we think things ought to be. When we fear, we similarly generate unnecessary suffering. As the expression goes, we “borrow” trouble. We imagine bad outcomes that might never happen. We think we’re protecting ourselves, when we are actually trapping ourselves in a place of negativity and fear.

  Of course, bad things do happen, but living in constant preparation for them is like always keeping an umbrella above your head to be ready for the day it will rain. All that time we spend sheltering beneath it, we’re unable to enjoy the blue skies that exist between the storms.

  There is another way to live, and it involves replacing fear with trust.

  * * *

  Exercise 2: An Upgraded Operating System

  * * *

  This exercise will help you reprogram your fear-based response system.

  Find a sheet of paper and a pen. You’re going to create a new map for your life. Center yourself by taking at least five deep breaths in and out.

  On one side of the paper, write the word fear in the middle. Scan your mind for situations that stir up a lot of fear for you. It could be that you’re scared of public speaking, asking your boss for a raise, being honest with someone you’re close to, or being alone. Perhaps you have bigger fears, like dying or getting sick. Jot down each one in a circle around the central word fear so that you create a mind map of what your life looks like when it’s governed by fear. Add in any feelings that those situations evoke: anxiety, hopelessness, despair, indecisiveness.

  How does it look? Not pleasant! Okay, now you’re going to upgrade your operating software.

  Use colored pens if you have them. Turn over the page and write the word trust in the middle.

  Ask yourself, “How would my life look if I wasn’t afraid? How would I feel? What would I do differently?” Jot down key words about how each situation would be transformed if you weren’t afraid.

  What would you do if you weren’t scared to say how you felt? How would you live if you weren’t scared of losing your job? What would you try if you weren’t scared of failing? If you didn’t tell yourself you were too young or too old, what would you be doing? Be really honest.

  Visualize what your life would look like if you weren’t afraid. Make those visions more vivid and real than the lies fear has given you. Enjoy them. Write down words that sum up how your life looks without fear: free, big, adventurous, bold, safe, courageous, happy. Enjoy these feelings.

  Congratulations! You’ve just mapped out a new direction for your life. The map marked “trust” is how your life is going to become. Look at it each morning to set your direction for the day and to give your subconscious a goal to aim for.

  Notice that when you’re looking at the side of the page marked “trust,” you can’t see the one marked “fear.” The choice is as straightforward as that: you can live either by fear or by trust. Flip between the two images and decide which one you prefer!

  * * *

  A New Direction

  I am learning to trust the journey even when I don’t understand it.

  —MILA BRON

  When you face a choice, picture yourself standing at a crossroads with two roads pointing in opposite directions. You can either choose the one marked fear, which will lead you straight back to where you’ve come from, or you can choose to trust and head toward your vision and a courageous, rich, fulfilling life.

  Any time during your day when you face a choice, simply ask yourself, “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?” And then do it. Take the leap, and the net will appear.

  This new way of life takes practice. The chances are that you’ve been ruled by fear for most of your life. So don’t be surprised when you encounter resistance. Fear won’t necessarily go, but your response to it will change dramatically.

  * * *

  THE THREE-SECOND RULE

  You can’t stop fearful thoughts from arising, but you can choose what to do with them. You have roughly three seconds to interrupt a negative thought. Allow it to rest in your mind any longer, and it starts to take hold. The faster you decline its invitation to engage, the less likely it’ll be to take up permanent residence. So when you have a fearful thought, don’t invite it in and offer it tea and sympathy!

  * * *

  Happy Talk

  When you’re feeling fearful, allow the adult part of yourself to talk to the frightened part of yourself, as you would talk to a scared child. Connect with your inner girl (see page 75). Notice and name what’s happening to her. Encourage her, praise her, and coach her through situations. When she doubts she can succeed, remind her of all her successes so far and encourage her to trust her instincts. Tell her when she’s doing a good job or when you think she’s being brave. Celebrate her achievements and console her with love when she’s disappointed. And when you’re done, congratulate yourself for trusting enough to try something new even though it makes you uncomfortable.

  Growing up, the rule at home was that children should be silent. I wanted to please my father, and so I was virtually mute in the company of adults. In school, I’d freeze with fear whenever the teacher asked me a question. I was so scared of speaking out loud that I’d answer in whispers. Nobody would be able to hear me, and the whole class would erupt in laughter. Now, of course, I’m no longer that terrified, silent child, but occasionally, when I’m in a par
ticularly challenging situation, I can find myself becoming mute again, and I have to work extra hard not to slip back into that early role of being a silent player in my life. The fear can be enormous, and I have to take a real leap of faith, open my mouth, and trust that I won’t be humiliated in the way that I was as a girl.

  —JN

  Trust in What?

  Trust in exactly the opposite of what you fear. Trust in the flow of life. Trust that you’re glorious, that you’re enough, that you’re lovable. Trust that life will unfold as it should. Trust that the lessons others need to learn will be taught without your needing to intervene.

  Remember fear’s acronym: False Evidence Appearing Real? Well, trust has a much better one:

  To

  Rely

  Upon

  Spiritual

  Truth2

  Trusting is really a commitment to believing that love has more power than fear.

  If you’re not convinced, experiment. Try trusting for a week and see how it plays out. Each day, choose to do what you would do if you had no fear. Refer to your mind map. Assume the best in every situation, even if you can’t fathom how anything good will emerge. Say yes when previously you’d have said no. Take risks. Know that you’re capable. Take setbacks as signs that a better opportunity awaits. Be aware of how it makes you feel. Notice how much more resilient and enthusiastic about life you become.