Say "goodbye" to fear this year! In 2012, there is just one new year's resolution that covers absolutely everything: "Have no fear." If you follow these three steps to detach from fearfulness, you will have smooth sailing in the new year:
1) Don't Give Your Fears Any Power:
In the movie Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks' character has died and finds himself in the position of defending his own life in court. In this court, he has to account for the times when he allowed his fears to keep him from taking risks that would have brought him success and happiness. The court administers no punishment. If the defendant is found to have too many fears, he or she simply has to go back to earth and try again.
Since fears rarely feature common sense as their primary attribute, the only purpose they serve in our lives is to challenge us to move beyond them. How are you doing so far? Are you an adventurer, an explorer, a discoverer of life? Or would you have a lot to explain in court when asked about the times you wouldn't take that risk and break free from the fears that inhibited your ability to move forward, holding you back from living your highest potential?
Think of a fear you've given power over to in your life and ask yourself if it has kept you from doing what your heart may be leading you to do. Maybe a fear of flying has kept you from the adventure and education of travel. A fear of success may be holding you back from doing your best. Or a fear of letting people know who you really are might keep you from developing deep friendships or finding a love relationship. Whatever your focus may be, think of what your life could be like without these fears. Now begin to let them go. You are in charge... not the other way around. Say to yourself, "I am not a prisoner of my fears. They challenge me to live fully. I accept their challenge, and I take my power back!"
2) Lay On Your Back And Float:
Fear is probably the biggest challenge to growth we encounter. It is the single most effective barrier to our living in a state of peace and joy. Fortunately, since fear belongs to the realm of the mind, it can be overcome through a change in our thoughts and perceptions. The primary thing to remember is that fear is almost always projection, not reality. It involves something that might happen or might not happen but that hasn't happened yet. FEAR is: "False Evidence Appearing Real."
So in a largely futile attempt to know the unknowable, we spend a lot of our time trying to second-guess life. When we start driving ourselves crazy over our inability to control what we have no power to control and no business controlling, it's time to enter into what zen practitioners term a "don't know mind." In accepting the fact that we can neither know nor control what hasn't happened yet, we free ourselves to concentrate our energies fully on the moment, the only true place of knowing.
Is there something you want to know, or an outcome you want to control and can't? If so, surrender to the moment and get into a state of the "don't know mind." Allow yourself to not know and to not care about knowing. Whatever it is will be revealed to you when and if it is supposed to be revealed. Just remember: You don't know until you know, so just lay back and float and recall the lyrics to The Beatles' song "Let It Be": "There will be an answer, let it be, let it be."
3) Don't Connect To Fear:
Fear is a place where you don't want to live. Maybe you can't expect to live without fear forever, but you can strive to choose not to connect to it. What's really the worst thing that can possibly happen to you if your fears materialize? Play the fear out in your imagination. Be creative. Pull out all the stops. Play it out to the hilt. Then take a deep breath and, on the exhale, release all the fear. Visualize the fear leaving your body and your life. See in your mind's eye a huge pair of scissors and use them to cut any attachment to the source of this fear.
In 2012, resolve to forge ahead a path of fearlessness. Realize that by using your own inner resources, you will not only have the strength to cope with the worst, but the ingenuity to create the best, in your future.