Be Fearless

Everyone wants to live without fear, but the task is more psychologically challenging than physically. Fears can be overcome through interaction with them in a safe environment. Fear is what you make of it, it is learned, like speaking, and can be unlearned.
courtesy:ehow.com


Steps to follow:

> Acknowledge your fear and realize that fears are natural and different for each person

> Talk with friends and loved ones about your fear and walk through the pros and cons of living with this fear.

> Acknowledge that it may take a while to overcome your fears. Mental health is more intricate, and sometimes people take months, if not years, or a lifetime to realize the invalidity of such a fear.

> Obtain comfort with the fear. The best way to overcome it is to confront the fear in a safe controlled environment being overseen by trained professionals and loved ones.

> Recognize fears are psychologically based upon our life's history. We need rewrite our history and confront the fear head on to become fearless.

> Acknowledge life is too short to live in fear, recognize, act, and live your life. Fears are internal, life is external, and it stops for no one.

> Most Important, keep a connection with the master!

Make Your Heart and Your Mind Work Together

The same voice in your mind that told you to act, is the same voice that ridicules you later for making that choice.



Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?

I want to show you how I’ve learned to make my heart and mind get along.

Because unfortunately…

It’s typical in our society to feel a conflict between what we want to do (our heart) and what we feel is practical (our mind).

We end up living 1/3 of our lives in a cubicle for the “benefits.” We stay friends with people we only kind of like. We do and say things to fit in and seem cool that really go against what we feel is right in our hearts.

Because it’s caused so much heartache in my life, I’ve spend a lot of time trying to diagnose the source of this problem.

Is my heart at fault? Are my feelings just silly and frivolous? Or maybe it’s my mind that’s to blame. It seems like it’s always coming up with conflicting messages anyway.

And on it goes and we never really seem to get to it. There’s a lot of social conditioning that covers up and obscures things too. Even if you really feel like that’s the right choice, how do you know for sure? How do you know it’s not just what you think you should do?

All of this might sound a little over the top, but it’s a real problem. It ruins lives because people can’t make up their minds about whether or not the path of their heart is valid or not. They end up living a shadow of the possibility that they could. All because they couldn’t make up their mind.

There’s a simple answer to this problem. It might seem even a little too simple. But most things are. Bruce Lee once said “The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” I believe this.

First… let’s take a look at where this problem starts.

Confusing the purpose of the heart and mind

The main reason we suffer from this illness of indecision, is that we’ve mistaken the purpose of heart and mind. The heart is like a compass, it’s purpose is to guide the direction our lives should take. Our heart takes a birds eye view on our life and says “this is where you’re at and this is the direction you need to go.”

Our mind on the other hand isn’t made for making purpose driven decisions. The nature of the mind is that it conceptualizes, organizes and compares information. It does this as best it can and says “here are the facts, here’s both sides of the story.”

If we compare our mind and heart to a courtroom, our mind would be the defendant and the plaintiff (both stories) and our heart would be justice or the judge (the right direction).

The reason we’re so troubled by this conflict of head vs heart is that the mind is not only playing the prosecutor and the defense, but has take over the role of the judge as well.

The mind should never be the judge. The minds job is to compare and contrast. To sort things out and say “this is what I’ve got, do what you want with it.”

But more often than not, our mind isn’t doing that. Our mind is making our choices. What’s worse, is even when we don’t need our mind to be at work, it’s still going. Comparing and contrasting everything. Brooding, mostly.

Have you ever noticed that even when it’s completely unnecessary to think about anything, your mind is still going? Have noticed that when this is happening, your mind is getting in the way of your experience? Just a few examples of this that come to mind for me are; sex, watching a sunset, or taking a shower. My mind really doesn’t need to be thinking while doing these things. There’s no point. At all.

Taming the mind

Before we can get the mind to take a break when we don’t need to be incessantly thinking, we have to make friends with it first. If we try to tell our mind to go away, or that we don’t need it, we’ll just encourage it all the more. Instead of a retreat we’ll get a resurgence. We don’t want that.

So if we want to end the conflict of head and heart, we’ve got to figure out a way to marry this disparate pair.

Remember when I told you the answer to this problem is simple? Well, it is. But it won’t be easy at first, because we’ve been doing it all wrong for so long.

What we have to do is only use our mind to go with ourselves. The Latin root for sin means “to go against.” So we have to learn to be without sin.

We have to learn to constantly realigning our decisions to be “with ourselves.”

Have you ever wondered how to tell whether a decision is right? It seems so difficult, doesn’t it? But it becomes so easy when you think “Is this choice going with me, or against me?” You’ll find that the right choice is immediately evident.

If you can learn to practice this every time you make a choice, you’ll start to regain your personal power.

You’ll create a marriage of your heart and mind. Maybe then their child (you) won’t have permanent emotional damage from the divorce it’s been suffering from for so long.

Make the choice today. Just try it out. I think you’ll like it.
courtesy:zenhabits.net

How To Concentrate

People who are able to concentrate completely on the task at hand are great achievers--brilliant professionals, big business people, executives, leaders in the world of finance, science, invention, literature, education—-it doesn't matter what kind of work. The point is that when these people pitch hay, they pitch hay; when they write a book, they write a book; when they manage a sales campaign, they manage a sales campaign. They focus on that one thing they do at that one time, and nothing else, and every ounce they have goes into it. But behind of all this has been a lot of mental discipline, a lot of habit-forming, a lot of brain-building. Let's consider some of the steps they've climbed.



Steps

* Relax: It may seem paradoxical that the first step to better concentration refers to relaxation, but there are many intense intellects who fail in their concentration because they never relax. Failure to let go between efforts is their chief stumbling block. They keep them-selves tense, nervous, "keyed-up" all the time, even when there is no need for it, thereby wasting nervous energy. They find it very difficult to "let go" or to relieve the high-tension by a little natural, wholesome relaxation. But we must learn to let go, to relax completely, before each period of intense concentration. Here is the working principle: Relaxation precedes perfect concentration. All great mental achievement has been preceded by periods of absolute rest or relaxation! During this time, the mind stores up fresh energy and establishes a reserve to draw upon during the hours of intense concentration demanded by the big task that lies ahead. Different people take their relaxation best in different ways, but, whether in complete rest, of play or wholesome laughter, it must come before any sustained effort of concentration. Nature itself requires cycles of growth and rest. Take your breathing spell before the battle.

* Free the mind: Nothing is of greater aid to concentration. In fact, unless you are able to do this, concentration is impossible. When harassed by the three devils, hurry, worry, and fear, the mind never has a fair chance to center on anything. But in your period of relaxation, you have an excellent opportunity to free the mind. Now is your chance to eliminate all mental handicaps and get ready for the race. Not only hurry, worry, and fear must be thrown overboard, but anything and everything that troubles you and disturbs your serenity and your peace of mind. Out they go! You should not indulge in day-dreaming, either, or mental drifting. Practice meditation. Clear the mental horizon; give yourself a clean slate to write on when your hour of concentration comes. And when it comes, if you have relaxed and cleared your mind, you will be possessed of that rare thing: mental poise.

* Find the right conditions: It's true that a trained mind can concentrate under any conditions—-in the roar of crowded cities or the busy hum of traffic, in the midst of telephone calls or a thousand and one other interruptions. But these people are already masters of concentration, and this article is addressing those who have not yet learned how to concentrate. Therefore, it's only a matter of common sense to make conditions as favorable as possible. Some of our greatest creative thinkers absolutely insist on right conditions and the right kind of a place in which to produce their masterpieces. True, good books have been written in mail, great poems written in the trenches, masterly speeches conceived on an express train. But in every case there was a degree of concentration strong enough to rise triumphant above the environment. Otherwise, keep the following conditions in mind:


Seek a quiet place free from all distractions (and noise is a terrible distractor), a place free from all interruptions which may break your train of thought (and a telephone is a terrible interrupter), a place where you can be alone, free from all outside influences (and a friend who "must drop in" is a terrible outside influence), and a place of pleasing environment, beautiful or otherwise, where the atmosphere is right for you. Preferences differ with the individual; it's all in the mind. One may do his or her best work seated in a luxurious chair in a beautiful and artistic study--another may reach his or her highest plane of creative thinking while sitting under a lone pine tree on the crest of a hill. Choose your own place for concentration. Use ear plugs, occupational ear defenders or even both!Solitude has always been, in all the history of mental achievement, a requisite for great work.
Solitude calls forth the mood of receptivity. Only then do we get the best. Great things are worked out in silence. Then come the flashes of inspiration—the new visions. History reflects the statement that to bear solitude well is a mark of greatness. And today, right in this practical present, thousands of our most successful business men have learned this secret...That by getting alone, they can gain new efficiency, and think out better plans for managing their daily affairs.

* Make a daily schedule: Your daily schedule helps to focus the mind, holding it steadily to one thing at a time and in the right order. Following a logical sequence tends to eliminate confusion. It's been demonstrated in efficiency tests over and over again that time and energy are lost not so much on the operation itself as in passing from one operation to another. So in our mental operations, failure to move smoothly from one thing to another results in confusion. And when confusion comes, concentration goes. A definite daily schedule is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind on the right track. It often proves to be the salvation of those who have been unable to concentrate. Try it.

courtest:wikihow