The fear of risk

How much do you take risks?

How do you feel about taking risks at the moment?

I wonder if your answer is “Not a lot at the moment”. It would not be surprising. After all, people are very focused on hanging on to their jobs. Recently it has been shown that stress levels at work here in the UK are sky high, as people are focused on hanging on in various ways. The recent banking crisis has highlighted the severe downside of risk. So we are focused on hanging on to our money. Due in part to the fear of terrorism, and the sophistication of the technology, we are now under more personal surveillance than ever before. So now we are focused on picking up our litter, keeping our speed down, avoiding the bus lane, not over-filling our dustbins (seriously – one local authority even puts microchips on the bins!!), not demonstrating in certain places where the police might film you, and so on. “Keeping you safe” intones the advertising, “for your protection”.

Fear-based living. You can do it if you want. But will it be fulfilling? Will it meet your purpose? Is that a good place to be?

Living in fear is disempowering. Fear is a contracted energy. It takes us where we don’t want to go: anxiety, defensiveness, suspicion, distrust, even aggression. The self-aware person can notice when fear is getting a hold and choose not to be caught up with it. After all, an acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.

When we become risk-averse, when fear gets a hold, we shut down on the part of us that experiments, that tries out new things, that looks outside the box, that pushes outside our comfort zones, that expands our horizons. When fear gets a hold, we focus on those things which we fear, making them more prominent and more likely to occur in some way.

Risk is when we try out something new. Watch a child learning to walk. At some point they start to stand up without holding on to something, they wobble and they stay upright, with a big smile on their face and to everybody’s delight. They take a risk. Learning to ride a bike is similar. You might have to take the odd fall, and that can be managed by using grass, but unless you experiment with wobbling all over the place you won’t learn the art of balancing on two wheels and moving slowly forwards. A bit like life.

I’ve noticed recently how people I talk to who are considering a career change say that part of them would like to make a change but that another is afraid they will make the wrong decision. So they don’t take action on their wish. And stay stuck.

Being stuck is a common experience of people who come to the field of self development. Usually they have had enough of it.

This is when we need to find a way to test something, experiment with it. Part of the learning experience is that once tried out, we find it is not what we feared. We gain confidence and in turn become more expert at what we are doing. Inner faith builds. We re-connect with our life-force, with who we are.

There is an English saying: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

When we take action, the universe moves to, to support us. All sorts of possibilities emerge that we were not previously aware of, that confirm us in what we are doing, to point the way, to help us towards our goal. It’s like everything has reconfigured itself. People who find this confidence say they are surprised how things seem so possible now. They say they feel optimistic, that the horizon has expanded, that their belief in what is possible in their own potential seems suddenly so different and so much better.

It is a shift of perception. That is a power each of us has within us. Like we discovered when we first learned to walk. “Out of the mouths of babes…”.

Trust

Trust – it is a hard one. When things aren’t going well for us, that’s very often when it is hard to trust.

On the macro level, we in the UK are now in the midst of arguably a major scandal involving Member of Parliament’s expense claims, where it seems quite a few have been claiming excessively at the taxpayers’ expense. The press are full of comments about a serious damage to trust, at a time when many more people are claiming job seekers’ allowance and others are finding their benefits reduced, right smack in the middle of a mega recession caused in part by bankers’ excesses, so we are told. People are angry. How can we trust them now, bankers and politicians? Who can we trust?

If you go to a micro level, when times are difficult for you, you might find it harder to trust other people. Let’s say you have lost your job. That can cause a breakdown in trust in employers. Let’s say your partner has just walked out on you or abused you. You might find it harder to trust others again. Say you have lost a dear one to illness. You might find it hard to trust say doctors, as my father did after he lost my mother prematurely to breast cancer.

Things might not be working out as you would wish. When life gets difficult, it becomes hard to believe everything will be alright. You might have a crisis of faith and feel depressed or anxious. For some it is about confidence. I might feel unsure that a particular circumstance or event will work out as I want. Will I be able to trust in what occurs? Will the future work out well? An anxious person will be plagued by doubt about that.

When things are going well, when we feel in the “flow”, that is when it is a lot easier. I am more “in the moment”. Somehow it is a lot easier to trust that what will happen will be OK. You walk with a confident step, speak with a confident voice, ask for what you want and find it is OK, move among large groups of people and feel safe, go to unfamiliar places and know that whatever happens you are safe and will be supported. All sorts of people, signs and occurrences will appear to support you just when you need it, even without asking.

Magic! So, what’s the difference? What’s changed?

Life, events, other people, circumstances, the runes, the stars, fate, God’s wishes for you, your karma? What do you think? Is this familiar?

Are the choices you make, the perceptions you have, the actions you take, dependent on others or events? Or on you? What’s changed?

Trust is something that comes from within. When we put on one side our fear and connect with our inner certainty, our belief in ourselves, who we are, a change takes place. It is a shift of perception. It is something we change within us. When that shift occurs, when we let go, all manner of things work out differently.

It is something I coach people on, how to develop their inner confidence. And the result is magic!

Inner strength, inner faith, inner confidence (Latin root “fides” meaning faith), knowing who you are, centred within yourself. It is something people who present know well, the day you have the wobbles and the day things sing. The journey is to know that inner state more and more.

Then, interestingly, we can trust what goes on out there too!

Who says we can't have fun?

So, to end the week, here I was sitting at my laptop doing some urgent catch-up e-mails to people I’d not got round to responding to earlier, and inside I was thinking that it really was time to stop and start having my weekend break. Somehow I was resisting stopping. This work stuff gets a bit compulsive, I was thinking.

Then as if on cue an e-mail turned up from a colleague in the US whom we had been training with in Canada a while ago. At first I thought it might be spam. Until I recognised who it was from. Eventually, I let go… and clicked on the link.

So before I go any further, perhaps you might like to check within yourself too. How are you feeling right now? Tense, annoyed, fed up, tired, had enough, or whatever. Have you had a good week or has it been demanding in any way? How do you feel about your weekend coming up? Are you looking forward to something or will you collapse in a heap in front of the TV clasping a glass of wine?

So enough of that, I suggest instead you draw the curtains and of course turn up your volume and then watch this right through.

Video clip

How are you feeling now? Full of laughter? Smiling? Feeling good?

Laughter is infectious. One person laughing sets off the rest of us. Research has shown that a person laughing triggers a response in the brain such that another laughs too. They “can’t help it”. So it is natural. The people on the train couldn’t help themselves. We have the expression, “helpless laughter”. Did you see all those pole-faced people? A familiar sight on the metro, subway or tube. People looked at the person who was laughing as if he was a bit crazy and then they started to laugh too. Once another laughed out loud somehow permission was given. Everybody followed suit until the carriage was rocking! In fact it can come like an explosion, an eruption from within. Then people go quiet, and then some snigger, and then there’s more rolls of pure, happy, unrestrained, unadulterated joy.

Isn't it wonderful that somewhere inside we have this gift, this quality? Total happiness. It is there after all.

Did you see the person who then joined the train? He looked dead straight. Everybody else was sniggering like naughty children, a bit conspiratorial. Then more laughter. And then he got off.

That was so like one of our Laughter Yoga sessions. What people discover in this is that laughter happens for no good reason. It is just there. You don’t actually need to laugh “at” something. It just wells up from within.

I don’t know if you have watched the Dalai Lama talking on TV. He just laughs and laughs. It is a characteristic of Eastern meditators. Once we go beneath the layers of the ego, and let go of our stuff, our natural state is pure laughter, fun, lightness, joy, contentment, peace, enthusiasm. It just is.

Allowing ourselves to laugh like this is a letting go, an allowing of the Self within to do its thing.

So, if you get the opportunity this weekend to have a good laugh, really get into it and let yourself laugh just for the sake of it. Let the thinking self go and just enjoy!

To read more, see our Laughter Yoga website and while you are there sign up for our Top 10 Happiness Tips.

And pass this on to spread some joy around, like that man on the Metro!

Susan's gift

A postscript to the remarkable events of last week when the phenomenon of Susan Boyle’s singing swept around the globe on the internet.

I was among many it seems who went back to watch the video repeatedly and continued to feel emotion at what I was witnessing.

For me, two things in particular come to mind. One is the powerful sense of joy I felt watching this talent explode before our eyes with the opening bars of her song. It was instantaneous. I felt overjoyed to see someone realise their potential, to reveal to us how good she was, to show her talent to the world. And it built. With each climax in her singing, there were more explosions of enthusiasm. The joy expanded. No wonder the audience rose to its feet and cheered loudly. It was like we all as watchers on-line rose with them, as one, tears in our eyes.

Now there’s another point here that those of you with a spiritual interest might have been aware of. It seemed to me that we rose “as one” in applauding her. What struck me most powerfully was how unifying the experience was. It touched very many of us. This is not just the common sharing of feeling. This is a joint experience, when we become united. The power of the internet is such that this was shared across huge numbers of people around the world. It was powerfully positive.

What was happening for me is that I felt touched at my essence by what I was witnessing. What was occurring was one of those moments of connection with Source, the Self, God, Allah, Life or whatever you choose to call It.

At That level, there is unbounded joy, bliss, contentment, peace, laughter, pleasure. This, for me, is one of the portals to the Unmanifest referred to in Eckhart Tolle's writings (“The Power of Now”; “A New Earth”). For a moment, or more, every now and again, we as humans touch the Eternal. It is in our nature.

That to me was Susan’s gift, putting many of us in touch with That. That to me is why so many were affected. So, thank you Susan.