No, no, that’s not fear, that’s excitement!

I recently listened to Greg Mooers, a motivational and spiritual speaker who spent eight years living as a monk. He was searching for his soul and what life was about and decided to go to into the monastery to pray and find his answers. He studied heroes such as Mother Teresa. He found that each hero that he studied had a heart virtue – this is what gives him/her passion and makes life worth living. For Mother Teresa, her heart virtue was compassion. Our heart virtue is also what we are so passionate about it that we would die for it. And though we are born with our heart virtue, he contends that as we grow up, we are encouraged and taught by our “tribal people” to take the safe route versus the courageous route. The safe route keeps us in our comfort zone where we don’t take risks or step out when in fear.  Mooers has an assessment tool you can take to find your heart virtue on his web site. (Mooers)

 Greg’s mission is that we each need to be our own hero and step out in courage. Living from the inside out, he encourages us to live life BOLDLY and asks that each day we step out in courage by doing one act that requires courage, putting aside our fear of looking like a fool. The part I love the most is how he helps us differentiate between fear and courage. He reframes our fear into excitement when he states, “No, no, that’s not fear, that’s excitement!” He encourages us to say this out loud when facing fear.  I love this because when you think about embarking in a new activity, or something new happening in our lives, we often have a sense of anxiousness and may identify the feeling as fear. But that is also the same feeling that can move right into excitement. Reframing this in our mind, stepping out in courage allows us to shift from fear to excitement. Now that is fun!  Mooers challenges us to train ourselves to be our own hero daily doing heroic acts of stepping out of our comfort zone with courage and excitement.  One small act of courage a day – in alignment with the world you want to create. “No, no, that’s not fear, that’s excitement!” Go out and create the world you want to live in!

Works Cited

Mooers, G. (n.d.). http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=2MXgIQ6sMEE&feature=endscreen. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from www.heartvirtue.com.

Letting Go of What We Have No Control Over

Yesterday someone said to me, “What good would it do to get upset? It is like getting mad at a computer. It will not change anything.” She had a good point. There are certain things that happen in our day that we really can’t control. Being upset about what happened isn’t going to change it. And it isn’t going to help us maintain the peace. Realizing when there is nothing we can do to change a situation is healthy thinking. That thinking will help us respond in a way that will be helpful within ourselves. It will help us maintain the calm in the midst of the storm. We can’t control what others think, say and do. We can’t control certain life happenings. However, we can control how we think and what we say and do. We can control how we choose to handle a situation. But the first step is to catch that initial response, that initial thought. Is there really anything that can be changed in the situation right now? If there clearly is nothing that we can do about it, it is a mute point. If we need some time to be angry, upset, and mull it over, then give the situation an allotted time to express your feelings. But realize that how we approach a situation, how we think about it is going to affect how we feel. And how we feel is going to make a difference in what kind of day we “choose” to have. This we have control over. For today, make a decision to assess your situations. Do you have any control over what is happening? If not, move on, let it go. Keep your peace.