Fear and Avoidance

I have included the following two sections and two subsection within the “Exercise 1: Gratitude” section because I believe that the following information will be MUCH easier to absorb once you have consistently used that exercise for 3 – 6 weeks.

Now, it makes sense to avoid what we fear because we must have good reason for fearing it, right? People fear snakes and spiders and avoid them to prevent the danger of being bitten by a poisonous kind of their species; yes, this does make logical sense.

However, when you consider that people desire love but fear vulnerability; people desire social acceptance but fear social rejection; people desire success but fear failure; solely focusing on avoiding fear as an automatic mode of behavior becomes a life where a person runs away from everything and never seizes any opportunities that are present for their happiness because he or she is afraid of experiencing the negative end of the spectrum, never realizing that this way of emotionally thinking and behaving keeps their life in a negative state. Making the choice to avoid most things is an indication that the mind is focused mostly on fear rather than desire; focused on what the mind does not want rather than what it does want!

For those with an avoidant type of personality, which I once possessed myself, the only way to break past this negative state in your life is to approach and/or strongly think into and embrace that opposing fear to move through to what you desire with faith. Since our minds operate automatically by thinking and feeling in more positive or negative ways, if your mind functions more negatively that means more fear resides in your mind than faith, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself of your faith; a mind that has regular fearful thoughts will cause you to question your faith, which is doubting faith because faith is strongly and truly believing in something without any question. Fear and faith CANNOT co-exist in the same place (your mind) as fear brings doubt of your faith; live in FAITH, NOT fear!

Start small in changing avoidant behavior; for example, I was terrible about avoiding people’s phone calls and texts if I simply didn’t feel like talking to them until someone new came into my life that I became smitten with and she showed me what it felt like to be on the other side of this situation.

She had made it sound like we were going to be the best of friends and do all this stuff together but when she began avoiding my texts more and more (we’re still friends), I became upset and frustrated due to the unfulfilled expectations she had set in the beginning. After dealing with it for a week I came to realize why my friends would gripe at me about doing the same thing, so I text each of them and apologized if I made them seem not important enough to bother giving them my time. Since then I have been answering every call and text from friends and family; if I’m not able to at that very moment, I make sure to get back with them by the end of that day.

At first I was upset and frustrated with her but it wasn’t until I realized that I exhibited the same avoidant behavior that I was able to reconcile with my friends for making them feel how she made me feel and move past it. Often times we get frustrated with others for acting the way they do but if you stop and really think about your past and present behaviors, you will likely find that you have behaved in those same ways at one time or another which will allow you to notice the experience of the emotions that you may have caused others to feel, bringing about a sense of empathy in understanding both sides of a situation!

As we get older, fear becomes more prominent in our thinking because we experience the negativity of physical reality for many decades and begin considering the future possibilities of danger and focus on that in attempt to avoid negative circumstances; but what happens when we constantly focus our thoughts on fear and avoiding negative circumstances? That’s right, the law of attraction will keep bringing it all to you!

The news doesn’t help either considering they sensationalize drama, death and destruction more often than positive, hopeful and encouraging life events. We live in an age where we can get information about what’s going on in the world, sports and the weather from other sources besides the news; I recommend not watching your local news because they encourage a fear driven mentality. Some might say, “Well, I need to know what’s going on in the world!”

My response is that if you don’t vote or actively participate in political events, nationally or locally, then there is no need to watch the news for political updates because you aren’t actively doing anything to try and change it anyways; also, if what you are watching on the news has no direct and immediate impact on your life, then all it will provide is an emotional reaction and usually a negative one at that! Trust me, if something is truly important to the whole nation or world, something or somebody in your life will let you know!

The FBI website shows that over the last 10 years the violent crime rate has STEADILY decreased in the U.S. but does the news broadcast this, of course not (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1). Fear is a mechanism for those in power to control the population; if everyone is afraid, they will look to the leaders of the countries for protection and guidance.

 

Now that you have a better overall grasp on the importance of fear and avoidance, let’s look at just how important forgiveness is to utilizing the law of attraction for your own benefit.

 

Next page: Forgiveness is ESSENTIAL