A New Way To Deal With Financial Fears

Love is the ultimate way to deal with fear, but breathing is a good place to start. Love is about expansion; fear is about contraction.
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A Solution That Contributes To Your Own Well-being As Well As The Community's

Transforming Fear Into Creative Energy
Most of the solutions to the current economic crisis do not touch the real problem. The real barrier is not financial in nature but rather emotional and spiritual. At the root of the problem is a lack of awareness about fear and how to deal with it. Particularly, the problem stems from not knowing how to transform fear into creative energy. Unless we learn how to navigate this new territory, any sort of government bailout or stimulus package simply rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Understand What Fear Is For
If you know how to turn fear into creative energy, you can respond to economic implosion with a benign explosion of creativity. From 35 years of helping people deal with fears of various kinds, we've seen remarkable results come from this feat of emotional alchemy. Here's what can help: First, understand that all organisms contract and pull toward the center when scared. Second, understand that humans, unlike other organisms, often resist this natural contraction by pretending not to be afraid or hiding our fears even from ourselves. The value of this contraction for humans is that when we allow ourselves to go deeply within, we can then access deeper levels of creative potential lying dormant within us. A good comparison in nature is to think of how winter allows the fallen seeds of autumn to contract and coalesce around their essential nature, which then comes to the surface in springtime. If nature resisted the contraction of winter, as human beings often resist the contraction of fear, the integrity of the whole cycle would be thrown off.

Fear has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to do two things with rapid precision:
1. Fear floods our bodies with adrenalin to deal with a perceived threat.
2. Fear sharpens our awareness so that we can find a creative solution to the current situation.

Understanding fear is a crucial first step in transforming your financial conditions in a time when even great fortunes are evaporating into the air. To understand fear, take a deeper look at how people respond to being scared.

•Many people try to deal with fear by pretending it doesn't exist. They say "I'm not scared" when they really are.
•Other people acknowledge fear but think of it as a form of weakness. That was the approach John McCain bragged about in the '08 presidential campaign. He said "I know what fear feels like...I know what hopelessness feels like. I felt those things once before. I WILL NEVER LET THEM IN AGAIN."
•Biologists tell us that fear is wired into us but that how we respond to fear is something we learn. There are four main ways that we humans (and all our fellow mammals) learn to act when we're scared. We call them the Four F's: fight, flee, freeze or faint.

Some of us get angry and combative when we're scared. That's the "fight" half of the famous fight-or-flight mechanism. Some of us learn not to fight but to flee when we're scared. Others of us freeze when we're scared. We get immobilized and can't think straight. A small minority of us gets dizzy, spacey and faint when we're scared. If we're "fainters" we need to lie down when we're scared, and maybe watch an old Star Trek episode.

The Four F's are the popular learned responses to fear, but there's a new, better response that's being called forth at this time in history. We have seen it work wonders in our own lives and in the lives of more than 20,000 people whom we've counseled over the years. Here it is:

When you're scared, don't waste time trying to deny it or seal it out. Instead, let your awareness become wide open to feeling it deeply. Let yourself experience your fear and inquire into it, because there is a priceless discovery at the center of it. Fear is a shimmering fog bank that hides a geyser of creativity. Most people don't get to the creativity because they see the fog and shrink back. Don't do that. Be with your fear in an open, exploring manner. Find out what you're really afraid of. Is it homelessness? Starvation? Losing self-esteem? All of those are valid reasons to be scared.

Take a stance of openness to your fear, because it comes in waves at surprising times. You may think you're through it when suddenly another wave rolls in. When it comes, your best move is simply to breathe with it. As one of our mentors, Fritz Perls, M.D., said: Fear is excitement without the breath. When you remember to breathe with it, it turns into excitement within seconds.

Love is the ultimate way to deal with fear, but breathing is a good place to start. Love is about expansion; fear is about contraction. One thing we've learned, from up-close work with people, is that love is bigger than fear. There is a quick and simple experiment you can do to prove this to yourself. Next time you feel scared, love yourself for feeling it. Love and appreciate your fear rather than judging it as something to be fixed. Notice that the fear simply evaporates and turns into creative energy. It seems like a miracle the first few times you do it, but its power comes more from physics than metaphysics. Even though there are minor periods of contraction, we live in an expanding universe. We have no choice. That's the way things are going in the larger cosmos. Just as it's a good idea to ride a horse the way it's going, it's wise to participate with the larger forces in the universe by flowing with them. If we don't, we get into a fundamental argument with the way the world works, and as the wise Frank Zappa said, "In the war between you and the world, back the world."

We need more creativity in the world. Even on the consumer level, we need more creativity. People are tired of buying the same stuff. We need a creative explosion in the world of stuff: cars that don't pollute, roads that don't get potholes and new forms of conscious entertainment. Fear can be the gateway to creativity, but only if we allow ourselves to be aware of it. If you've been feeling afraid about your finances, acknowledge your fears and let it remind you to live in the larger question: How can I use my fear to bring forth a surge of creativity that will serve me and the world around me?

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