Are You Being Drained By Worry, Doubt, And Fear?
If you're anything like the rest of us, you're trying to create more wealth and success in your life. More wealth and success means you can make a bigger difference in the world and the lives of others. At the same time you can taste more of what life has to offer.
I coach and teach small business owners and professionals in workshops, a mastermind, and my private coaching practice. The only significant difference I see between those who create results and those don't is how they handle and manage worry, doubt, and fear - their internal resistance. We all deal with these elements of our humanity. How we relate with them determines the results we're capable of creating.
I consistently offer clients my three most powerful tools to observe, understand, and manage the internal resistance in their minds and bodies. These three tools are meditation, shadow work, and visualization. These tools have transformed my life and the lives of many others.
Everyone says they want to achieve more and enjoy life more, but not everyone's willing to do something they're not comfortable or unfamiliar with. For some, these tools are too woo-woo. For some, they're just an inconvenience.
For those who incorporate them, they change the game, and the amount of wealth, success, and happiness they enjoy skyrockets.
Meditation
There are many forms of meditation, but concentration meditation is the most widely used and recognized form of meditation in the world. This form of meditation focuses on the body, a mantra, or a single point of emphasis.
To focus on the body, you simply shift awareness from thoughts and brain activity to the internal feelings within the body. If you focus on feeling the energy throughout your body, in each body part, or by focusing on the feeling in each area of the body, you will experience your body in a new way.
You can also focus on your breathing. As you breathe the cold air in through your nose and expel the warm air out of your mouth; as you feel your chest rise and fall and your stomach expand and contract with each breath, you will begin to encourage an appreciation for your presence. This appreciation will not come from solely appreciating your thoughts, but from the realization that you are more than the total sum of your thoughts.
We typically do not spend a lot of time feeling our bodies through our awareness, so shifting awareness to the body will allow you to sense the internal presence that is always there. You might feel pain, but by becoming aware of the areas that lack pain – the simple presence of your body – you will naturally quiet the mind.
It’s not possible to stop thinking by trying to stop thinking.
It is, however, possible to clear your mind by focusing on your body, your bodily functions, your energy, and your presence. By creating a focused awareness, you will increase your appreciation of yourself, and this appreciation will improve your overall acceptance and self- worth.
Concentration meditation focuses on remaining present. By focusing on the present moment, you will realize a heightened awareness and improved clarity of your current state. Your life is never as bad as it might seem – if you remain present.
Over time, the volume and frequency of thoughts will slow, as the brain begins to be conditioned to remain present, instead of trying to review the past and predict the future.
Do this every day, and over time your mind will quiet and your peace and happiness will increase:
Download the app named the Insight Timer.
Set the timer for 10 minutes (or start with two, three, five minutes – whatever suits you right now).
Set the timer for a 30-second‘ warm-up’ period.
Set a background noise of your choice, unless you prefer silence.
Hit ‘start’ on the timer.
Focus on your body: your breath, the rising and falling of your chest, or the visuals in the space between your eyes.
When you realize you are having a thought, bring yourself back to body (your breath, relaxed limbs, the space between your eyes or the “mind’s eye”).
Allow yourself to sit for the entire period without judging the quality of your session.
Increase time as you desire.
Repeat daily.
Shadow Work
Your fears, anxieties, and thoughts point to the shadow work that will most effectively serve you. Observe yourself and your concerns. Some of these fears might be fear of poverty, being alone, failure, success, or collapse in your life or business.
These fears are built upon past traumas and experiences. You have been conditioned to feel these fears as a result of deeply held beliefs. Your mind and emotions are trying to avoid the same experiences that caused the original suffering, so you are conditioned to constantly attempt to avoid the same feelings.
Bring yourself to a deep state of relaxation (meditation or three-minute mind break), the deeper the better.
Now, begin to visualize the worst case scenario for one of your biggest fears (maybe losing everything or failing). You will begin to feel the emotion in your body (sadness, anger, shame, anxiety, tension, guilt, grief) that has been concealed by escape, suppression, or repression. By feeling every ounce of this emotion, by fully accepting the worst case scenario as having already happened, the energy in your body that was blocked by past events will surface. You aren’t going to like it but hang in there – it does get better.
Continue to feel the emotion, lean into it instead of running from it – cry, sob, yell, pound on something, shake, whatever path it takes – let it go. Your body and mind will finish processing the events, traumas, and experiences that caused the blocked energy. You may need to do this a few times with the same emotion. That’s okay. Each time it will be better.
Once you work through blocked emotions, it’s like breaking through a big hairy blockage in a clogged pipe - the water flows without resistance. Your energy will flow without that resistance and you will feel a freedom you’ve probably never experienced before.
Visualization
There is a part of your brain named the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS has been designed to filter out information and stimuli that is not necessary for survival. The RAS can be your best friend and your worst enemy.
Have you ever looked for something right in front of you, but couldn’t see it? The salt? Your keys? Your glasses?
That was the RAS at work. Even though you wanted to see what you were looking for, your RAS was hard at work trying to only show you what you needed to see to keep you safe.
Have you ever selected a new car because no one had that make, model, or color combination? When you drove it off the lot, I bet you started seeing them everywhere, right? That is also the RAS hard at work. Your RAS recognizes whatever it feels serves your survival. In the instance of the car, up to that point, it had no reason to recognize that make, model, and color combination, until now.
If you go out today and look for a yellow Camaro, I bet you’ll see one. You can train the RAS to see what you want it to see by visualizing what it is you want.
If you believe that there are no new client opportunities, visualize new client opportunities, and you’ll begin seeing them.
If you feel unmotivated to workout and improve your conditioning, visualize exercise. See yourself getting up to workout, what it feels like to be motivated, and it will happen.
If you crave more affection, love, or care in your marriage, visualize these things during meditation. You’ll notice them where you were blind to them before.
If you want to experience more financial freedom in your life, visualize money flowing through your life. When you begin to pay attention, you will begin to appreciate the current flow, and more will follow.
Don’t believe me? Ask the experts. They knew this technique decades - even centuries - ago. Napoleon Hill documented some of the ways this worked in the lives of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell in his book, Think and Grow Rich.
I’ve also witnessed it first-hand in my life while building a coaching practice from nothing to prosperity.
The more senses you can engage during visualization, the better. See it, feel it, taste it, smell it, hear it - sense it all. With repetition, you will begin to experience your visualizations. What you focus on will grow. Focus on success, and you’ll experience success. Focus on failure, and you’ll experience failure.
This concept dates back millennia. It is not new. It is proven, and it is real.
Download the Insight Timer.
Set the timer for 10 minutes (or start with two, three, five minutes – whatever suits you right now).
Set the timer for a 30 second‘ warm-up’ period.
Set a background noise of your choice, or keep it silent.
Hit ‘start’ on the timer.
See and feel the outcome you desire (i.e. income, relationship, health, etc.). The more you can feel the outcome already having happened, the more effective the visualization.
Allow yourself to sit for the entire period without judging the quality of your session.
Increase time as you desire.
Repeat daily.
Putting It All Together
Meditation will bring you clarity and peace. Shadow work will help you minimize and manage your fears. Visualization will help you create whatever you want. Everyone will tell you that they want wealth, success, and happiness, but not everyone will install different practices into their lives which will bring them these things.
When I started my transition I would have done anything to create wealth, success, and happiness in my life. I was taught and practiced these three tools. They changed my life.
You say you want more, but do you really? If you do, I challenge you to try these for 3 months. I guarantee your life will change.
I guarantee it. Not a worry, doubt, or fear in my mind and body.
Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash