Picture this scene which I sure you have experienced at least a few times in your life:
It is a beautiful sunny day, just perfect temperature. Everything in your world couldn’t be better. In fact all things seem perfect. You even find yourself singing your favorite song.
Then out of the blue a flash thought crosses your mind. Something you were very concerned about the other week, and you had put out of your mind, comes darting back. You had no answer for this thing at the time, and could not facing thinking about it any more, so you choose to forget about it. Now it returns to haunt you, and immediately a sinking feeling hits your stomach. A flood of thoughts come rushing in to overpower your mind, bringing a very negative shadow of fears and doubts.
Now you are feeling terrible, your body starts to tense up, you can’t even think of the words of the song you were singing before, and you are not even sure if the sun is still shining.
What happened? Nothing in your circumstances changed.
A tiny flashing thought changed the whole day for you. How come? When you put that concern out of your mind you merely transferred it from your conscious mind, to your subconscious mind. Along with the thought, the emotions you felt at the time were stored in the same “file folder”. This folder in your mind, was simply waiting to jump out and haunt you at any given moment to ruin your day, and that is what it did.
Facing Our Fears.
I am sure you are familiar with Job of the Bible Job was the one who went through some severe trials and ended up with double what he once had when it was all over. In the midst of his tribulations, he made an interesting declaration: That which I feared has come upon me”. (Job 3:25) Wow.
Unfortunately there is living proof of this truth within my own family, I had an uncle, my Father’s only brother whom I vaguely remember (I was 3 years old when I last saw him). His one fear in life was he would get sick with polio which at the time was an epidemic. He died of polio at the age of 21.
So fear is a dangerous thing to allow staying in our lives.
Molly Gordon describes fear as Fantasy Expectations Appearing Real. Michael Pritchard quotes fear as being “that little darkroom where negatives are developed”.
Negative fantasies incubated in the darkroom of our conscious and subconscious minds create fears.
So how in the world can we uproot these fears from our lives?
First thing to do is to take a few moments in a quiet place, with a blank sheet of paper and a pen/pencil. Write down all the things you fear. Write fast, and note down everything that comes to mind, whether you think you fear it or not. When you write fast, it helps your mind not get a chance to “challenge” with the thought: “no I really don’t fear that”.
Now read them back one at a time and face them. There are times when you can do something to avoid the “worst case scenario”, and if this is the case then do it! (If you read the Bible you will know that James tells us that faith without works is dead, in other words, real faith, or the law of attraction has to have ACTION to be complete), Neither will work without ACTION.
The situations that are out of your control will take faith to eliminate. However there is SOMETHING you can do. You can make sure your thoughts are free from fears.
Fear is an emotion, which results from a series of fantasy thoughts which dramatize a negative outcome of a situation. You can deliberately conquer these thoughts with the power of your will.
This power of the will (or decisions) is first applied to the thought patterns. The decision to change the thought patterns must be made BEFORE any high pressure incident occurs. This will ensure we don’t get “jumped” by sudden thoughts that bring fear and doubt that change our emotions before we realize what has happened.
One of the very best ways to achieve this change of mindset is to form a habit of taking time every day to meditate on something positive. Read a chapter of the Bible, a devotional book or a motivational book.
Think about what you have read.
Ask yourself: “How can I apply what I have read to my day”. “If something difficult happens today, how will I handle it?”
You will find your day goes a lot better after spending some quiet time at the beginning, with some positive reflection and even some planning for the day.
Let’s step out of the world of fantasy expectations and start creating a positive reality.