Is FEAR Holding You Back?

[PMcDonald]

I received this in my inbox and wanted to share it with everyone here. It is a wonderful article...

Two Choices
By Stephen Edwards
© 2007 Nightingale-Conant Corporation

How do we change the way we feel at any given moment? How do we generate powerful thoughts, emotions, and feelings consistently? We know what fear is and how we allow fear to negatively impact relationships, careers, and finances. We must find the courage, strength and determination, patience and persistence necessary to resolve these issues and create the life of our dreams and the life of fulfillment we truly deserve. How do we access our most resourceful thoughts and feelings, and how do we face our fear and feel our power? Well, let me tell you of such a person who's done just that. His name is Michael, a gentlemen I once worked with.

Now, Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I'd be twins!" He was a natural motivator, and if an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling the employee how to look at the positive side of the situation.

Seeing him consistently having this type of attitude made me curious. So one day I went up to Michael and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be positive all of the time. How do you do it?" Michael replied, "Each morning, I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today: I can choose to be in a good mood, or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim, or I can choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining, or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested. "Yes it is," Michael said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all of the junk, every situation is a choice. You can choose how you react to any situation. You can choose how other people affect your mood. You can choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood. The bottom line is, it's your choice how to live your life." I reflected on what Michael said.

Soon after this, I left that company and started my own business – I made a choice about my life instead of just reacting to it. We lost touch, but I often thought about Michael and his advice. It helped me at several critical junctures of my life.

Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery, and weeks in intensive care, Michael was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw Michael about six months after the accident, and I asked him how he was. He replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins! Do you want to see my scars?"

I declined to look at his wounds, but I did ask him what was going through his mind when the accident took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be-born daughter," Michael replied. "Then as I lay on the ground, I remembered I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Were you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. Michael continued, "The paramedics were great; they kept telling me everything was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action." "What did you do?" I asked. "Well there was this big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Michael. "She asked if I was allergic to anything and I said yes. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they were waiting for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled 'GRAVITY!' Over the laughter I said, "I'm choosing life – operate on me as if I were alive and not dead."

Michael lived, thanks to the skills of those nurses and doctors but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully and that attitude is everything. In order to generate the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that we need to experience in order to generate the quality of life we deserve, we must develop an attitude of gratitude.

I heard a story about a father, a very wealthy man, who decided to send his son off to understand and appreciate how fortunate he was. So he decided to send him to what the father considered to be a poor family out in the countryside. When the son returned three days later, the father said, "Well son, did you see how poor people can live?" "Yes father, I did," said the son. "Tell me what you saw?" said the father. "Well, I saw that we have expensive lamps imported from Europe, and they have stars. I saw that we have one dog, and they have four dogs. I saw that we have a swimming pool in our garden, and they have a creek that never ends. Thank you, father for showing me how poor we are."

You see, if we have our friends and family and our health, we are already rich. Sir John Templeton, one of the most successful investors of all time, was asked the secret to creating success. He said, "Overcoming fear." "I understand that," said the interviewer, "but what's the secret to overcoming fear?" Sir John said, "Gratitude."

You see, if you are truly grateful, you have no fear. It doesn't matter how much money you have or how many material things you accumulate, if you are not grateful, you will never be rich.

[Shamou]

That is beautiful and most inspiring...thank you PMcDonald for sharing that...

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[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

Thanks. I needed that.

[bellbird]

Thank you. It's good to remember that and even better living by it. I have forwarded on to my partner as well who is worrying much.