Today we ask that you know that the worst things that can happen are never as bad as one’s fears make them out to be.
People spend a lot of time worrying about bad things happening in the future. They imagine all manner of horrors befalling themselves or their loved ones. People are really rather morbid in this way.
In reality, it is very rare that one’s worst fears come to pass.
And when they do, the fearful mind has a way of making things much worse than they actually are.
You all have seen that two different people who go through the same traumatic experience may have a completely different reaction to the experience.
For one person, the death of a loved one causes pain and grief that passes with time. Another person might never pick himself up out of deep suffering; he might spend the rest of his life in painful mourning.
For one person, the sudden loss of a job is not a very big deal. For another, it is debilitating, and causes a nervous breakdown.
It is not the event, at the end of the day. There is no question that traumatic events do happen. But the way one reacts to traumatic events is extremely dependent on one’s mental state, and the ways in which one has been conditioned.
The habit of spending a lot of time worrying about all the things that could potentially go wrong does not help you when a crisis actually happens.
It is the fear around events that increases trauma, and lessens one’s resilience.
When a crisis unfolds, life is really very simple. There is something to do. And then there another thing to do. Things must be taken care of. If there is an emergency, you seek help. You do what needs to be done. And then you rest, and recover.
In truth, life is always like this. Every day, there are things to do. And in between the active doing of things, you rest.
Without fearful imagination, that is all life is. There are things to do. And then you rest. It is that simple.
Fear and worry are really just people sitting around frozen in their negative mental projections, imagining or reliving traumas, when they might otherwise be doing something, or resting.
Without the fear, there is no problem. Either there is something to do, or it is time to rest the mind and body.
Without the fear, it is actually not difficult to perceive that life is very good, on the whole. Traumatic things may happen, yet life on the whole is very good.
When you experience fearful thoughts, it is good to question them.
One thing you might try is writing down your fearful thoughts in a journal. Later on, you can look at what you have written down. What you will discover is that the vast majority of your fearful thoughts and projections never come to pass.
Just live life. Do things, and rest.
Living with constant fear and worry is like walking around wearing a pair of dirty goggles. You can’t see anything clearly.
Without fear, you would see that life is very good.
wordfromthewell 