Fear | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “Fear”

04 Jun 2012

Talk Yourself Into It

As it has been said, your thoughts determine your feelings and your feelings determine your actions. If you want to change your life, you have to control the way you think. Sadly I see so many of my friends and co-workers who seem to be talking themselves into being negative about themselves and others.

Science says that you’re constantly talking to yourself — all the time. Your mind is talking to you! I bet you are talking to yourself right now. Research shows that most people speak at a rate of 150 to 200 words per minute, but your mind can listen to about 500 to 600 words a minute. That’s why you can listen to one person while planning what you are doing tonight at the same time.

It’s been measured that the conversation we have with ourselves — is at a rate of 1,300 words per minute. Because your mind sees in pictures, and you can see a thought in a nanosecond.

So your personal conversation may be saying, in effect, “Everything I say puts me down.” Like most of us, you are your own worst critic. Seems like we’re always putting ourselves down. We walk into a room, smiling, but inside we’re thinking, “I don’t look right. I don’t fit in. I may not be able to talk well with strangers. I’m sure they will think I am boring.”

God wants us to stop putting ourselves down. When you put yourself down, who are you really putting down? When you say these bad things you’re really pointing to God, who made you. When you say, “God, I’m worthless. I’m no good. I can’t do anything,” you’re saying, “God, you blew it with me.” That’s why God says it’s wrong to put yourself down.

“Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right … Think about all you can thank God for and be glad about” (Philippians 4:8 LB).

So, don’t think about all those weaknesses in your life. There isn’t a better thing you can do to raise your confidence level than to start believing that you should fix your thoughts on what is true, good and right. You are valuable; you are significant; you have the ability; you are more than capable.”

Ref: Inspired by Rick Warren.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, Book of Proverbs, Change, Fear, Happiness, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, Self-Awareness, Sprituality

01 Jun 2012

Applying Labels

I suppose there is a basic human need for people to want to identify things with a label.

Some people use those little label making machines and label everything in their office or home so there is a sense of organization, others at the grocery store examine labels for contents to be sure they understand what they are eating, while others desperately work to label the identity of the people around them.

Labeling people seems to be a very challenging exercise, sometimes using only one label when another may be just as applicable. Just trying to find a single label that can apply is very dangerous, with it comes all the assumptions of what that label can mean because of personal prejudice or society’s definition.

Labels may be a political one, or about your religion or choice of partners. But there are labels everywhere. It’s not like labeling the container in your kitchen “sugar” when there is sugar in it. Pretty easy, because you can be pretty sure that is what it is when you see it and taste it. Labeling people is so much more difficult to do. With those labels also come some preconceived notions of what that means about the person.

There is a great sense of order by grouping things that seem to be alike under one label. For many of us it is a need. Coming out of that, there is a sense of leaving less to the unknown by having labels assigned. Labels seem to provide peace-of-mind that we know about our world around us. It confirms that we are in control.

Without labels we can lack the idea of being aware of our world, often it may threaten our perceptions of things. How can something be good and bad at the same time? Where are the lines that define the shades of grey? Who decides? It can be defined by opinion or a vote… but who’s opinion and what vote?

So today I am struck by the casual and frequent comments I hear all around me about people and their labels for someone else, and how often that leads to misunderstanding, hatred, prejudice and the lack of willingness to know any more once the label is “assigned”. It can cause a lot of conflict that makes relationships disintegrate, make friends move on, and choices for the future be skewed.

Of course we all have our own personal labels, those that identify us. We create those as we live our lives and make our choices. We often may be proud of that definition. We should. We may not share that with everyone else, because that alone could lead to a label that others may choose not to understand.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Definitions, Fear, Grace, Label, Life, Opinion, People, personal prejudice, preconceived notions, society, Who Are You

13 Mar 2012

Our Fear Factor

I have noticed more lately than ever before how much fear there is in the world. It is a controlling part of so many people’s lives. It’s simple things like being sure you wear the right thing when you go outside, or being sure you say the right things. But it can be more complicated; like fear of losing your possessions, or your relationship with someone, or losing the life of a loved one.

Like wandering down a dark street wondering what hides in the shadows, we often wonder thru life fearful of its outcome. We take the necessary steps to be on the defense and be sure that we don’t get hurt – but we do many of these things as a sacrifice to our life and what it could be. Sometimes fear generates anger, sometimes it generates sadness, other times doubt. But in defense of fear we also keep so many other things from entering our lives as well.

Being on the offense against fear can often lead us to do reckless things that we can learn to regret later. The offensive could mean we lose friends, we hurt ourselves carelessly or we falsely take on things that we shouldn’t have. Either way it puts us in the middle of reacting to everything with a single lens to look though ( and they aren’t rose-colored).

A good friend of mine once pointed out to me that the opposite of love doesn’t seem to be hate, it seems to be fear. If that is true, we do a great job of insulating ourselves from love, we don’t say things we could to others, we make decisions to continue relationships or end them purely based on fear. A lot of psychologist couches are occupied by people who have not been able to honestly share their love with/for another person – I imagine often because of fear.

Our love of God is compromised, our love of our fellow humans is painted with all sorts of prejudices. We isolate family and friends because of it. Is like FDR once said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”? Can we exchange fear with love? Or will we forever be measuring our “fear-factors”?

It sometimes makes me sad to think we have so much more to give. Okay – I fear I have written too much. I am done now.