Our desires and fears color everything we think and see.
We’re not completely objective about anything.

But, itâ€s easier to look at someone elseâ€s situation and see it more clearly, more truly.

Do you ever find yourself going in circles, unable to decide, unable to take action?
You feel the urge to move in some positive direction, and at the same time, you feel compelled to stay where you are, or move in some trivial way that is no movement at all.

Sometimes, we’re aware of being stuck, and it pains us.
Other times, we just dismiss it as no big deal.

Yet, when we look at others who are stuck like this, we canâ€t understand whatâ€s wrong with them.

We often say to others the equivalent of “just do it.”
Personal Development seems easy from the outside, looking in.

Maybe you know people who are addicts, or who have some compulsive behavior, or phobias.

And you, who donâ€t suffer from their addiction or behavior, just canâ€t understand why they do what they do.

It seems like thereâ€s an invisible force that pushes them in the wrong direction, or a barrier that stops them from moving in the right direction.

Much of the time, outside advice is no more powerful than the voice in you that tells you to move.
And you remain stuck.

We could speak of the power of habits.
When weâ€ve developed a habit, our mind works to maintain it and protect it.
We act in a certain way without thinking.

But thatâ€s not the whole story.
There are many habits that you can break with attention and persistence.

While other behaviors haunt you.
As though there were someone inside you that wonâ€t let you pass through a gate that leads to another life.

Itâ€s as though there’s a jailer, or gatekeeper who guards you, and wonâ€t let you out.

The Enemy Within?

This force within us that wonâ€t let us move and change, seems like an enemy.

It sabotages our success, our growth, our relationships.
It keeps us stuck in a life that we want to transform.

We feel trapped, imprisoned.
Sometimes we feel as though weâ€re stuck in someone elseâ€s life, while our true life is waiting for us beyond that invisible gate.

Will we ever pass through the gate to the life we ache for?

As long as we think that the Gatekeeper is our enemy, the more he will block our path.

Surprisingly, the Gatekeeper is not your enemy.
Heâ€s here to protect you.
Heâ€s the parent, the one who says “no.”

The gatekeeper is the one who treats you like a child, and thinks that you can only be safe if he holds you by the hand.

Think back to your time as a child.
Most parents try to protect their children from real, or imagined dangers.

Parents tell us where to go and what to do, and they tell us to stop.
Is there any word more associated with parenting than No?

Most of us move beyond taking orders from our parents at some point in our lives.
But weâ€ve internalized the idea that protecting ourselves from danger means acting like a parent.

That means standing at the door and saying no.

Who Stands Watch Over Your Life and Keeps You Safe?

We need a new way of looking at safety, and protecting ourselves.

We canâ€t just dismiss this part of ourselves that wants to keep us safe.
We have an innate, fundamental desire to be safe.

But we can replace our inner parent with a different kind of guardian.

We can appoint a trusted adviser, someone level-headed who will suggest which actions are more risky and less risky.

When you work with an adviser, you take responsibility for your own safety, and you accept that every action has risk.

And you are responsible to make the final decision.

Being a child often means not deciding for yourself.
It means letting someone else take responsibility for what happens.

Are we ready to stop being helpless children, who can always blame someone else for whatever goes wrong?
Are you tired of acting like a spoiled child, who wants his own way, but wonâ€t accept any responsibility?

Are you ready to protect yourself?

Iâ€m not suggesting that people with serious phobias or compulsive behavior can erase all their problems with a simple change in attitude.

But that change in attitude makes an extraordinary difference for everyone.

And for many of us, this change in attitude, changes everything.

The post Are You Acting Like a Spoiled Child? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Each day you step through that door and visit a distant and strange world for a few hours.
In that world you have a different name and face and body.
You live, work, earn money, face challenges, create, succeed, and grow – every single day.

And then, you return to your everyday, ordinary life.

The contrast between the two worlds is dramatic.
You canâ€t give up either one, and you canâ€t see how to bring them together.

If one person leads this double life, the two worlds may remain forever separate
But what if 100â€s of millions of people lead this double life?

Soon, they will demand that their everyday world becomes more like their magical one.

In Part 1 of this series, we spoke of virtual worlds on the Internet as the new frontier.
We suggested that the 100â€s of millions of people living hours of their days in these worlds would have a profound effect on our everyday world.

 
Second Life, or Escape from Reality?
Why do so many people find the virtual worlds so enticing, so enjoyable, and so meaningful?

Is it just the adrenaline rush of a world with fast action, danger, wish fulfillment, and the opportunity to express dark sides of us that are unacceptable in everyday life?

While we canâ€t completely discount this aspect of video games in general, and virtual worlds, in particular, this is only the surface of it.

Itâ€s much the same as the way pornography was a driving force in the adoption of video, dial-up bulletin boards, newsgroups, and even the Internet.

The opportunity to express and pursue certain behaviors dominates some new technologies, at least for a while. But we would be foolish to conclude that those behaviors are the measure of those technologies.

 
The Meaning of Fun and Games
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds, by Edward Castronova, discusses life in the virtual worlds in great detail. Castronova identifies a number of profound benefits that visitors find in these virtual worlds:

• Equal beginnings. Each player starts with nothing, and succeeds through her own efforts.
• Players proceed at their own pace, but when they finally succeed, they gain new skills and resources, and they join a community of players at that level.
• Exceptional players find recognition within the community of their peers who truly understand and appreciate their efforts.
• The worlds provide challenges which are appropriate to the skill level of the player
• There are clear measures of success and failure.
• The benefits of success are available without long delays.
• Failures do not permanently stop you. There is always the opportunity to start again.
• There is clarity in the virtual worlds between good and evil, and the world calls upon individuals to make choices.
• Activities are performed alone, and in groups, and typically benefit you and others.
• The most successful virtual worlds have clear rules, which are as simple as possible.

The virtual worlds, like our lives, are games — environments with rules, where the outcome is not certain.

But unlike many peopleâ€s experience of their everyday lives, these games are designed to be satisfying, meaningful, and fun.

One of Castronovaâ€s most profound observations is that people quickly lose interest in games/worlds that provide no challenge, or challenges that are too easy or too hard for the current skill level of the player.

I would add a few points:

• We crave the opportunity to remake ourselves, to break out of our current boundaries and find a way to explore the possibility that we know is waiting for us.
• While we want to break out of our old patterns and rules, we donâ€t want a world without order.
• We want fair, consistent rules that shape a predictable world, but leave us plenty of freedom to change.
• We want a world with stable civilization, and frontiers. We can then choose how much of our time to spend in the more civilized areas, and how much of our time to spend in the more wild areas. The frontiers provide unique challenges and opportunities to grow.

 
The Death and Rebirth of Civilization
Civilizations that lose their frontiers become old and frightened of change, and ultimately collapse and die.
Sometimes civilizations with frontiers still decay. This often happens when the frontiers are too far away from everyday life, and have little influence on the old world.

The virtual worlds are always close by. They have an ever-growing population that will bring their lessons of possibility and meaning back to the old world.

As the Internet began and developed, we saw a glimpse of frontiers in the distance.
The virtual worlds will continue this process, as they restore ever-growing, ever changing frontiers to us.

 
**Resources for further exploration:
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds
I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life
The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)

Terra Nova Blog on Virtual Worlds
Virtual Worlds News
Standford University Virtual Worlds Group
MIT Webcast on Virtual Worlds

The post The Internet — Life, or Just a Game? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Do you remember as a child, when the world seemed endless, and every stone was full of possibility?
And whatever we knew of the world, was only a beginning — a glimpse of endless knowledge that we could only dream of.

What happened to that world?
It seems so far away.

Do you feel that some or all of the possibility of youth is gone?
Has your inner world become full of pain?
Has it grown small, hard, and closed?

Do you feel at the mercy of a hundred little forces that move you to act in ways that youâ€re not proud of?

Youâ€re not alone.

Injury and Healing
When an area of the body is injured, it often swells to contain that damage, and accelerate healing. That swelling is a temporary protection.

If an area of skin is irritated, again and again, it can’t heal. Instead, the body builds up thick skin, a callus, in that place. The callus is stronger than regular skin, but much less sensitive. The body gives up the sensitivity, in exchange for strength.

Something similar happens with our emotions.
We suffer emotional injury.
But sadly, we’re not very good at healing emotional pain.
Many of our emotional injuries remain open wounds.

We continue to encounter situations, people, and challenges that strike at our emotional injuries, and revive or increase the pain.

Often the strongest pain comes when we face our own failures, contradictions, hypocrisy, and lies.

Unable to heal our pain, we try to hide from it.

We hide from the things that expose, and deepen our pain.
And from situations that remind us of parts of ourselves that we would like to forget.

We develop a network of mental and emotional habits which form an armor or thick skin to protect an ever-growing collection of sensitive spots.

We become harder, colder, and less sensitive.
We become less thoughtful about who we are, what is possible for us, and how we are ignoring that possibility.

As we stagger under the weight of our emotional pain, it seems sensible to build up armor against the worldâ€s dangers, and against pain. Through the cloud of our pain, the world’s extraordinary possibility seems distant. We are ready to abandon that possibility to escape our pain.

But our armor fails us, falls away, and our sensitive spots are exposed.
We are haunted, by our contradictions and lies, and the extraordinary possibility within us.

The thicker the armor, the more we hurt when the weak spot is irritated. It feels to us like someone stuck a needle in an infected wound.

Is it any surprise, as we strike out to protect ourselves, that our emotional reactions are wild, negative, and cruel?

Beyond Pain and Comfort

As a machine is used, it inevitably collects dirt and grime.
As we grow old, arteries get clogged, and organs weaken.

And as we age, we collect limiting and destructive habits and beliefs and fears.

Someday science will learn to clean and rejuvenate our bodies. Until then, physical decay is inevitable.

But even today, the common personal decay within us that crushes possibility is not inevitable.
This decay of the spirit can be stopped, and even reversed.

But, not through hiding from the pain, and pretending that it doesn’t exist.

When we feel emotional pain, we often seek comfort.
Sometimes that comfort is the comfort of sleep — erasing every pain, and every challenge.

At other times, we are prepared to live with our pain.
But we look for another sort of comfort. We want to find meaning in that pain, or at least meaning somewhere else in our lives.

We look for meaning through relationships, children, success, community, religion, spirituality, etc.

I have to find something outside of me that seems more important than I am.
I need to find a big something that I can call myself a part of.
If I can find that meaning, then all of the pain might be worth it.

Forever Young

The search for meaning is a wonderful quest.

But is there meaning only outside me?
Where is the meaning within me?

I believe that our greatest opportunity to live a meaningful life is born when we choose possibility over pain.

The love of possibility overpowers the escape from pain.
This is the road to personal development.

Can we love the truth again?
Can we find the courage to accept what we have done with our lives so far?

Can we release an inexhaustible thirst to see where we are, and accept our pain?

When we find that thirst, the little habits of mind and heart that bind us, lose most of their power.

Opening our eyes means that we will be confronted with our personal history.
At first this is troubling, as the pain of our history seems to overshadow everything else.

We need to see clearly where we have been, so we can see where we are.

And seeing our history clearly is only a small part of what we want from clear vision.

I want to look to a place that now seems far away, at the edge of a strange world.
I want to look for the full measure of who I can be.

It may have been a long time since I was willing to see the endless possibility that lies deep within me.

My eyes may have grown weak from living in a place far away from light.
The endless light may seem blinding and frightening.

Whatever I think I am, is only a shadow of what I can be.

My inner self may seem old and weak.
But deep within me, my light and my possibility, and my ability to become someone great is forever young.

That possibility will not be denied forever.

The post Are Fear and Pain Making Your World Smaller and Smaller? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Both are true.
The world is dying, and the world is growing and unfolding.

Life is full of contradictions.
Which side of life do you choose to focus on?

Do you focus your energy, through speech or action, on decay, destruction, and whatâ€s wrong with the world? (This is a focus on fear, and how the world will harm you.)

Or, do you focus your heart, your energy, your speech, and your actions on what is possible? Do you seek to repair what is broken, and to look for ways to create wonder?

Do you believe in choice?
Or do you think that who you are, and what you do, is determined, either by genetics, or the way that you were brought up.

I love the way that Steven Covey, in The Eighth Habit, speaks about choice. This book like his others are essential reading in the field of personal development.

Covey says that there is a space between stimulus (an influence, something desirable, something undesirable) and your response (a feeling, what you see, what you do).

Do your thoughts, your feelings, and your experience deny this?
Does it seem that you have no choice in how you react?
“He made me angry.”
“I canâ€t stand when she does that!”

How do you find that space between stimulus and response?
Sometimes that space seems very small, and we move too fast between stimulus and response.

But a seed is also small.
Take care of it, and it grows.

At first, your power to choose your response is small.
But when you exercise that power of choice, it grows, and the space of choice grows larger and larger.

Ignore or deny your power of choice for long enough, and it shrinks.

But always, the seed remains.

The post Do You Have The Freedom To Choose? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

So I checked out her reputation, and looked at recommendations from people like Deepak Chopra, John Gray, and Tony Robbins, and decided that reviewing this book was a good idea.

As I began to read the book and did some work, I listened to the CD that accompanies the book.

Dr. Oakes produces many products that use sound to relax and heal, but this is the first of those that Iâ€ve experienced.
This CD is beautiful and relaxing, about an hour long.

I listened to it twice, and enjoyed it even more the second time. I came away refreshed and alert.

What is a Review?

One of my beliefs is that there is no such thing as a completely objective review. A good review expresses the personality, talents, and belief system of the reviewer as much as the work under review.

There are many types of reviews.
The most common reviews probably answer one or more of these questions:

• Do I like it?
• What is the subject matter of this book?
• Is it well organized, and easy to understand?
• Does it entertain and/or inform me?
• If it makes promises, does it deliver on those promises?
• Is it worth my time to read this book?

The more objective parts of a review tell me what the subject is, and if the material is clearly presented.

But there are no absolutes in a review.

Whatâ€s clear to you may not be clear to me.
We have different experiences, and come to any book with different beliefs, likes, and dislikes.

I may like a certain authorâ€s style, and you may not.
I may like the way an author uses language, and you may not.

For example, Dr. Oakes likes to make up new phrases to describe the ideas that she writes about. There are many authors who do this.

Sometimes familiar words and phrases are burdened with old, limited associations.
New phrases can be a wonderful way to explore an unfamiliar mindset. The unfamiliar terms tell me that Iâ€m walking into the unknown. I take a breath, and prepare to learn something new.

I canâ€t so easily slip into those very dangerous three words: “I know that.”

Some of my favorite of her terms are future memories, action-based faith, and first and second thoughts and feelings.

Future Memories
If you are familiar with the law of attraction, manifestation, or visualization techniques, then youâ€ve heard of visualizing a desired future state in full emotional and sensory detail.

But she puts a slightly new spin on it, by also relating to that experience as a future memory.
I love that idea.

Action-based Faith
Action-based faith, asserts that belief in a desired future is expressed through every thought, word, and action. The more that belief is expressed in our thoughts, words, and actions, the more power that belief has to shape our reality.

First and Second Thoughts and Feelings
Dr. Oakes writes that we cannot always find the presence of mind to respond to a situation with the thoughts and feelings that we would like to. Our first thoughts and feelings may flow too quickly.

But, she writes, it is much easier to choose our second thoughts and feelings. We can choose to replace our initial thoughts and feelings with ones that more powerfully represent who we want to be.

Hunting for Ideas

Some people may not like her new language.
I donâ€t resonate with all of the terms myself.

But, Iâ€m a bit of an idea hunter.
I look for ideas that will shake up my thinking, and enable me to live in a bigger world, and understand more of it.
One powerful idea is often worth more to me than a well constructed, easy to understand discussion of ideas that Iâ€m already familiar with.

And Iâ€ve found many such ideas here.

Certainly the book is well organized, and covers a number of fascinating subjects such as manifestation, beliefs about what is possible, our relationship with time, saying no, welcoming resistance as a sign of change, health, and wealth.

This book may be a bit too ambitious at times, and some of the topics deserve a more lengthy treatment.

Conclusion
Above I discussed some questions that book reviews typically answer.
There are two more questions that I want to add to that list.
These are the questions that I personally want to see answered in a review, and they are the ones that Iâ€ve focused on in this review:

• Is there something new in this book?
• Does it introduce ideas that enable me to think about my world and myself in new ways?

The answer to these questions, for me, is a resounding yes.

(Dr Oakes’ book is available in the usual places such as amazon.com, and her website is Sound Health, Sound Wealth.)

The post Review: Sound Health, Sound Wealth first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

Not a whisper,
lost in the wind.

Or a shadow
forgotten in the dayâ€s sunlight.

Brighter than the light that greets dark eyes,
sharper than any sword,
endless as the space between stars.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

Do I see,
the impossible?

Thirst,
for what I cannot taste?

Teach,
what I donâ€t know?

And give,
what is not mine?

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

Do I just imagine a great lie?

Or does all possibility,
bright and dark,
flow through me?

Like fire,
that I have lived a thousand times
and will live again a thousand more.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

I stumble through a dark place,
where dreams lie broken and starving upon the ground.

A graveyard,
where the bodies rest,
still dying,
while their shadows yet walk the earth.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

Why do men pretend to be nothing,
even as they lay dying?

And why do shadows,
pretend to be men?

Their voices only a whisper,
their eyes dark and empty,
their hearts bitter and small.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

I will walk once more,
as a man,
with air around me,
sweet as roses,
and strong as stone,

With water that takes every shape,
and lifts up a world to smile at the stars.

With dreams that will burst into life,
moment after moment.

My dreams are not outside me,
alien,
distant,
or thin like paper.

We are one.
We are here.
I am not alone.

MY DREAMS WALK BESIDE ME

The post Affirmation Poem: My Dreams Walk Beside Me first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Unfortunately the idea of the enemy is nothing new for us.
It was 60 years between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the domestic terrorist attack of 9/11, but the time in between was not empty of war.

The United States has been in many wars throughout the years, large and small.
If war is a regular visitor to the United States, it is a resident in some countries.

The world remains full of war.
And there are no wars without enemies.

There are times when there are others who want to destroy us, others who seem deserving of the name enemy.
At other times, those who we do not understand, or who oppose us, are too readily called enemy.

Sometimes we make enemies of those who have different beliefs, languages, or skin color. In recent times, the bitterness that often colors the conversations between Democrats and Republicans has become a conversation of enemies, rather than a discussion of ideas.

It doesnâ€t matter what my politics are, or what your politics are.
Letâ€s both resist the urge to mindlessly support our own side, and say that itâ€s the fault of one side or the other.
Both sides are equally at fault.

There is an overwhelming bitterness that colors many discussions, on both sides of the aisle. Itâ€s like an ancient feud between two families that is just waiting to break out into open war.

Each side just waits for an opportunity to attack the other side.

Iâ€m sick of it, and I hope that you are too.
If enough of us refuse to support this politics of enemies, there is hope that we can get our leaders to change.

If our politicians put that energy into real work, it would be a different world.

Public and Private Enemies
As our involvement in wars rises and falls, the idea of public enemies comes in and out of our conversations. These are countries or ideologies that are said to threaten our country, way of life, etc.

And public enemies are not the only kind of enemy.

Each of us have private enemies.
Sure, weâ€re uncomfortable with using that word, but we think of them as enemies nonetheless.

For some of us, our enemies are those who have inflicted us with great physical or emotional pain.

When we start thinking about the enemy, hate follows along like a shadow, poisons us, and makes life bitter.

Maybe there is some purpose in forever holding hate in our hearts, directed at those who have nearly destroyed us.
But I donâ€t think so.

Hate does not empower us to protect what is precious in our lives from those who truly threaten us. It makes us stupid, and it darkens our hearts.

And, while there are people who truly threaten and harm us, privately, or as a country, there are many other people who we only pretend are enemies.

Enemies and Blame
Weâ€re introduced to the idea of blame at a young age, and itâ€s reinforced as we grow.

We donâ€t like to think of ourselves as flawed, and full of conflict.
We donâ€t like to admit that weâ€ve made many mistakes.

And sometimes itâ€s even simpler than that.
We face a challenge, and we find that we donâ€t know what to do.

We donâ€t like to admit that weâ€re fallible, and imperfect, and sometimes clueless.

We donâ€t want to feel embarrassed.
We donâ€t want to return to that feeling of being a little child, with a world thatâ€s too big for us to handle.

Rather than face our discomfort, and work hard to find a solution, we settle for an easy way out:
Itâ€s his fault.
Itâ€s her fault.
Itâ€s their fault.

We pretend that the only reason that we have a problem is because of what someone else has done wrong.

We sidestep the truth.
We take a real challenge that we could work hard and grow from, and turn it into blame.

We donâ€t have challenges.
No, we have problems.
And those problems are someone elseâ€s fault.

What is the truth when we find some difficulty in the midst of two sides that blame each other? Most likely, both sides have some share in causing that difficulty, and both sides probably have a role to play in finding a solution.

Enemies and Marketing
In Do You Hate Selling, I speak of Blair Warrenâ€s One Sentence Persuasion, and five powerful ways that can be used or abused to influence people.

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

In other posts Iâ€ve discussed the first four methods of persuasion (see links to these articles below).

The last method is help them throw rocks at their enemies.

Politicians, and people at every level of society, often slip into the easy way of enemies and blame.
Find, or manufacture an enemy that you can share with those that you wish to influence, and attack that enemy together.

Itâ€s frightening how effective this is.
And itâ€s so sad to see how hard it is for many of us to build ourselves up, without tearing other people down.

When marketers use this idea to influence or manipulate their customers, they donâ€t typically demonize groups of people.

Instead they talk about the forces or limitations that get in our way and stop us from getting what we want.

And they promise to help us attack those obstacles.

Of course, they want to sell us the perfect product.

Some products are wonderful, and can truly help us.
And marketers rightfully speak of common difficulties/enemies that we share.

Other products are useless, and the marketers are only manipulating us.

Weâ€re used to thinking of unscrupulous salesmen as the most manipulative people on earth, but even the worst salesmen don’t spend their time teaching us to hate.

The post Who Are Your Enemies? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

We all are.
Itâ€s a side effect of the way our mind makes sense of the world.
Let me explain.

Let’s say that your brain didn’t use your experience to help you understand the world.
Your perception of every object, in every moment, would be brand new, and you would spend all your time and attention trying to make sense of the simplest experiences.

Thatâ€s not how your mind works.
Instead, your mind finds patterns in your experience, and tries to fit every new situation into an existing pattern, so you know how to act with minimum conscious thought.
This leaves your conscious mind free to focus on the truly new situations that you experience.

How wonderful it would be if we could calmly, clearly, and consciously analyze our new experiences.
Unfortunately, our mind forces new things into old patterns, even when they donâ€t fit.
And when we encounter something that doesnâ€t fit at all into our established patterns, our first instinct is to protect ourselves, while we see if the situation is dangerous.

Itâ€s the same when we think about changing how we live, or who we are.

You really want those changes.
And you find it pretty easy to imagine how wonderful such a life would be.

Still, part of you doesnâ€t recognize that new “you”. The imagined you doesnâ€t fit into your existing patterns of safe experience, and is treated with caution, until that new you can be experienced and proven safe.

But will you ever get to experience that new you?
If a new you might be dangerous, the safest alternative is to completely avoid becoming that new you.
And for many of us that danger and fear stops us from making real progress toward our dreams.

The Shared Experience of Joy and Pain
Pain shared is lessened, joy shared is increased Spider Robinson

There are two ways of experiencing the world.

• Isolated. You can experience the world, even people, as objects – unendingly separate and different than you
• Connected. Or, you can experience the world as a thick web, with endless connections between you and everything that seems outside of you

Most of us live with a combination of both points of view, although the isolated, object point of view usually dominates us.

It doesnâ€t seem to be a choice, though.
The way we live is strongly shaped by our personality, and many influences that surround us.

But you have a choice.
You can choose to move toward a life of greater connectedness, or greater isolation.

And that choice is not as simple as being sociable, or moving away from people. You can be highly sociable with people in a superficial way, so that you remain isolated within.

Do you experience joy and pain in isolation? Are your joys and suffering something that exists only within you?

As the above quote suggests, joy and suffering are different when shared.

Suffering doesnâ€t disappear by sharing it, by expressing it to those that your heart truly connects with.
But the pain is different, weaker, more bearable.

Joy, on the other hand, is not weakened by sharing it with those who you have real connections to.
It grows, not only because others experience joy, but the joy in your own heart is different.

Stories of Joy and Pain
We have many experiences of joy and pain in our lives.

If someone asks you to tell the story of your life, will you tell them a soap opera of every pain and pleasure and joy, regardless of meaning?

A good story has meaning.
And in our lives, there are moments of pain and joy that have great meaning for us.

You remember the powerful pain and joy that you have experienced.
But only some of those intense moments have led to a greater you.

You may still be wounded and trapped by the emotional pain of some of those moments. They may be little more for you than uncomfortable baggage that you carry around.
Then, there are other moments of pain that you faced, and through the challenge of the situation, you grew.

Some of your experiences of joy were only momentary pleasures, and you may look back on them with longing, finding the past more pleasant than the present.
Or, your joy may come from the feeling of seeing something great and wonderful. It may have been a personal achievement, or a touch of something extraordinary.

Did those joys lead you to rededicate yourself to the values and actions which gave rise to them?

With that rededication, you grew, and became someone more capable of bringing such joy into your life, and the lives of your friends and family.

This joy and pain in our lives that challenged us to grow, brought us into the future. This is the joy and pain that is truly, personally meaningful.

To grow from such powerful experiences is difficult, for as weâ€ve said, weâ€re afraid to change

Were you all alone in those challenging moments?
Did you share these moments of challenge with the right friends, and become energized by their support? Did their help enable you to make those moments meaningful?

Safety in Numbers
Year after year, we make plans to find and live our dreams.
To get there, we must pass through changes that frighten us.

When you feel that you are not alone, you feel stronger.
Challenges that would frighten you, seem small with the support of others.

We can plan alone, and try to walk alone, and seek no help to achieve our dreams.
Or, we can find the right friends, mentors, and a mastermind group to support us, as we do the challenging work of becoming the person of our dreams.

The post Are You Afraid to Change? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Like you, I donâ€t have all the answers.
Iâ€m so full of questions.

And when Iâ€m honest with myself, my questions burst forth, and haunt me.
And one question comes back, again and again, in many forms.

“Whatâ€s being hidden from me?”
“Whatâ€s really going on?”

We each carry our own secrets. There are secrets that we hide from others, or even from ourselves.

But there are much larger secrets.

Do you ever feel, in your quiet moments, that our picture of the world, our understanding of it, and maybe even the way that we feel about it, is distorted, even two-dimensional? Itâ€s as though weâ€ve been hypnotized to believe in, and accept a flat, colorless view of a richer, deeper reality.

We know that something is missing, but we donâ€t know what that is.

And sometimes, even our questions are missing.
It seems as though weâ€ve all agreed to stop asking about the aspects of living that donâ€t make sense.

Iâ€m not claiming that thereâ€s some age-old conspiracy to keep us in the dark, and leave the world in the control of the few who know the truth.

But the truth is often uncomfortable, and weâ€re frustrated by the difficult challenges that life presents us, challenges that we often have no idea how to face.

How many of us let our hearts focus on the daily suffering and death in places like Darfur?

Do we let ourselves really think about the emotional and physical suffering that happens all around us due to crime, violence, or prejudice?

The media, far too often, use that suffering for its shock value, for a sort of perverse entertainment which drives us to read, listen to, or view the story, and somehow support that publication, channel, or website.

Itâ€s rare to be presented with a story of suffering that asks us to think about and explore the many complex sides of an issue. Itâ€s even more rare to be prompted to take thoughtful action, instead of being encouraged to find someone to criticize and blame, and be foolishly satisfied with the criticism alone.

Itâ€s perfectly natural to hide from suffering when we feel helpless to do anything about the problems that give rise to that suffering.

Confirming All Your Suspicions

Whenever some nasty secret is revealed about politicians, or the rich and famous, we all say “Ah. I know that her life couldnâ€t be as perfect as it seemed.”

In Why Do You Hate Selling, we introduced Blair Warrenâ€s one sentence persuasion:

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

There are five principles expressed in that sentence.
In other posts weâ€ve discussed the first 3 principles in detail.

Here weâ€re talking about confirming peopleâ€s suspicions.

Weâ€re filled with questions, whether we acknowledge them consciously, or not.
We know that weâ€re not getting the whole truth from others.
Hey, we know that we have our own secrets that we hide from others, and sometimes even from ourselves.

So, weâ€re drawn to secrets like an irresistably sweet dessert.
And when someone offers us secrets which will solve our problems, relieve our own personal pain, and go after our dreams, we canâ€t help but listen.

We want to hear the secrets that others know and use to acquire wealth, love, and success — with the spoken or unspoken promise that these secrets will do the same for us.

Knowledge, Action, and Discovery
Knowledge alone is powerful.
Sometimes, a few key ideas are enough to start us along the path of health, achievement, success, or love.

But all of the secrets in the world can only help us get started.

We live in an instant gratification culture, and we all suffer from that mindset, to some degree.
We’re waiting for secrets that will get us what we want without doing anything.
We expect results to appear without us first facing ourselves, and the everyday challenges that the world drops on us.

We want secrets and solutions that are like winning the lottery, perfection without effort.
Real challenges, and everyday life, require solutions that donâ€t happen in a moment. These solutions demand sustained effort.

You can buy products or courses that promise you the worldâ€s hidden secrets.
Many of them offer us useful, even potentially life-changing information.

Iâ€ve bought more than a few, myself.

But these secrets are nearly useless to us, without the actions we take to bring ideas to life, and face and transform our challenging world.

Someone who holds the worldâ€s secrets, but finds endless reasons why itâ€s not yet time to take action, will accomplish little.

Someone who is determined and experienced at taking action, will make magic out of simple ideas, and go on to discover her own secrets.

The post What’s Your Secret? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

She had this eternally wise expression on her face (ok, she is a bit of a genius). And, like all other babies, she had no real understanding of the world around her.

But she was born knowing how get our attention, and get the care that she needed to survive.

Was she powerless?
She was totally incapable of taking care of herself, but she could get others to do what she needed. Thatâ€s definitely a kind of power.

Later on, when she grew aware of herself, she took great pleasure in crawling, and walking, and talking, and learning.

We love to learn and change and grow and act. It makes us feel powerful.
And our power is amplified by working together with others who can do for us things that we cannot do for ourselves.

Powerless
Fast forward 10, 20, 30 years, and many of us are tired. Weâ€ve lost much of that natural sense of personal power, that excitement that comes from feeling our potential, and acting on it.

What went wrong?
Can you remember who first told you that what you do doesnâ€t count for much?
Was it a parent, a friend, an enemy, a teacher, a boss?

Or did you apply some standard that others gave you, and find yourself lacking?
Did you convince yourself that youâ€re powerless?

And why did you listen when you were told that you were powerless?
How did you come to believe that you donâ€t have any power over the way that your life unfolds?

Did someone make you a victim? Or did you give the world permission to convince you that youâ€re a victim? Did you unknowingly give your power away?

You may feel that you must live your life, tossed back and forth by forces that surround you, forces that seem overwhelming and unfathomable.

But who told you to feel this way?
Who convinced you that it has to be this way?

How did you come to feel that your greatest hope for power comes through getting others to do things for you, as though nothing you can do counts?

When we feel powerless, we alternate between feeling that weâ€re stuck, out of control, and searching desperately for a way to find power.

But what kind of power are we looking for?
We have so many strange ideas about power, and where it comes from.

Force
Do you look at power as a way to force or bribe others to do what you want?
Do you want the power that comes when people pay attention to you, and want to please you?

Whether itâ€s physical strength, a position of authority, money, or some trick or technique to convince people to do what you want, itâ€s all about control of others.

These kinds of power are about control of the world outside of you.
However sophisticated the desires are that we want fulfilled, we want the power of the baby to cry out, and let someone else do it for us.

Talent
Then, there is power that comes from natural talents, whether of the mind, or body, or heart. This is power that lies within you.
These are talents that give you power to shape your world.
But having talent is not the same as knowing what to do with it, or using it, or feeling ourselves powerful because of it.

People often find their talents, but wait for others to tell them how to use those talents, whether they matter, or what they mean.

When you do this, you give others permission to control you. You give away a chance at real power.

You can search for power in a thousand external ways, and see those powers rise and fall, see them pushed aside by forces that sweep them away in a moment.

You can take your own internal sources of power, and let others reshape them until they only exist outside of you, and can be easily pushed aside.

Dreams
You can dream.

You can believe in yourself, and walk with great feeling toward the future, a future that you shape with your dreams and your actions.

You donâ€t need to ask anyone elseâ€s permission to dream.

And your dreams can find new worlds where no one has been before.
What power can compare with that?

But like other great sources of personal power, if weâ€re not careful, we can give this power away.
We may give others permission to shape our dreams.
We may convince ourselves that our dreams mean nothing, and we have to swallow the dreams that others give us, and pretend that they are our own.

Take a few new steps with me.
Let us learn together to walk in new worlds.
Let us learn together to speak in a new language.
Let us find again the unique abilities in each of us that give us our own dreams.
Let us share what is best in us with others, to inspire them to find their own greatness.

And let us live in a world where everyone is powerful, without looking for others to serve them.

The post Who Tells You That You’re Powerless? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.