Are you Making Choices from a place of Fear or Love?
What drives you to go to work everyday? What keeps you in a certain relationship, or out of it? Why do you dress the way you do? What's your motive to go to the gym, or not?
All your choices come either from a place of Love (includes peace, joy, acceptance, and courage) or a place of Fear (includes anger, guilt, shame, and apathy). You’re either moving towards something (Love) or away from something (Fear).
Yes, Fear is hardwired into our brain and is essential for our survival. That being said, it is important to understand that Fear serves no good beyond the first 3 seconds of its activation in your system, unless you’re literally running for your life or fighting for it.
The heightened state of Love releases the trapped energy you experience when in Fear. That energy allows clarity of the mind, stronger immune system, sharper focus, resourcefulness, and a general feeling of wellbeing to mention a few.
Here’s a story extracted from the Co-Active Leadership book by Karen and Henry Kimsey-House. This story illustrates beautifully the difference between the two states of Love and Fear:
Two women are losing their father, their last surviving parent, to cancer. For Eloise, the journey is terrifying and overwhelming. Her life is so busy, packed with the demands of her job and the challenge of raising three children. She loves her father very much, but deep inside, she is so afraid of what is happening to him and to her. She is also angry. Why did this have to happen to her? Why did this have to happen to her father? She hates the loss of control and the sense that she is powerless to have things be different. She does her best to care for her father, but she finds it difficult to talk about what is happening inside her. He’s so sick, and she doesn’t want to bother him. When her father passes away, she feels a deep sadness and also a vast emptiness.
For Janis, the journey is one of heartbreak and transformation. She has a full life with a demanding job and the challenge of raising her three children, but she wants to spend as much time with her dad as possible, so she talks with people at work and in her family and enlists their support, asking them to take on some tasks that would normally fall to her. She and her dad face the journey together and talk often about what death means to each of them. When her father passes away, she feels a deep sadness and also tremendous gratitude for the gift of sharing this important passage with him.
The two stories feature the same situation. However, the experiences of the two women are completely different. Yes, they made the same choice, but the source of their choice informed the quality of their experience and the outcome.
What you do is the tip of the iceberg, it’s what lies beneath that determines the life you live.
