The Maze of Fear

Last night I watched the movie, The Anatomy of Hate, A Dialog of Hope. This film looks at the social context for hate groups and the fear that motivates them. After viewing the film there was a question and answer session with the filmmaker, Mike Ramsdell. One thing he talked about was how we as social groups create walls of fear that separate us from other social groups and prevent us from seeing them as we see ourselves.

We have to walk this maze of fear to get through our day-to-day lives, to interact with those that are other then ourselves. But we also have to walk through the maze of fear to look inside, at things we hide from ourselves. To see into our own hearts we need to move around the walls and look at what hides inside.

Being fearless is not about not feeling the fear but about being able to move past it, through it or around it without letting it exert too much pressure on our actions or letting us act in violation of our values. It is when we let fear control us, consciously or unconsciously, that we tend to make decisions that take us from the path we choose to walk in life.

We must, therefore, be aware of our fear and recognize it for what it is. We must understand it and see if it is rational fear (as in fear of lions) or if it is irrational ( a fear of all cats large and small.)It is ok to react to the rational fears, the voices that help us avoid real pain, death and injury, things that can actually happen. But we must not let the irrational fear, the fear of the possibility of pain or death makes us act in ways that are not in line with who we wish to be.

Finances

Last month I mentioned that the changes I wanted to make in my life this year would focus on my relationship with money. Since my finances are something that has been a long running problem for me, this has been something I have been scared to look at, and so of course, I have been procrastinating.

Last night I got started on creating a budget tracking spread sheet based on the one recently reposted by Consumerist.com. You can find it here and the directions for using it are here. I modified their spread sheet a bit to account for my weekly pay schedule and to help track spending on food, since at the moment, this is one of the largest controllable expenses I have.

While the experience has not been pleasant the outcome is not as bad as I feared. Also with this first step to taming my financial demons I have begun to feel like I can do this, and, as I have mentioned before, confidence is a powerful force in helping us make the changes in our lives we want to make.

The next step for me is to make a habit of using the budget sheet. While this will not be easy at first, if I can write a blog regularly then I can enter my financial data regularly.

Sadness

The cultural obsession with happiness can contribute to unhappiness. We are programmed to believe that if we are not happy there is something wrong with us. What happens is that we begin to feel bad and then subconsciously we feel bad that we feel bad because feeling bad is wrong.

We need to understand that it is ok to be sad, it is ok to be angry and it is ok to be disappointed. We need to feel our emotions if we are to be happy. We need to give our "negative" emotions a chance to exist. If we sit on our sadness it festers, and rots at the happy moments.

Giving ourselves over to the moment and the emotions that live in the now is the best way to see ourselves through. If we do not we carry the baggage and the hurt with us for our entire lives.