Throughout December we read a lot more posts about sadness, problems within the family, violence, hunger, frustration, poverty, and broken hearts,… I guess like all of you it really moves and while we are reading those stories we wish to just hug those people and tell them that they are not alone although it seems for them.

For now, I want to pick out something a new blogger brought to my mind very clearly. Her story left me with wet eyes. She had a hard life of being abused in many ways and therefore feels like a second-class person. When we look at her from the outside we would say: Honey, this is over and you are not in that situation anymore. Now it is your life and you can live it your way without being dependent on anyone from your childhood. In her post, she wrote that people told her that she had to change something in order to change her life. This is so true. I also teach that. But when you are so caught inside your own fears, it seems absolutely impossible to only move an inch. You are paralyzed and scared to even look up. What might be outside there? What if the people I meet will hurt me again? What if I fail since I was told a lifelong to never succeed and never be smart or good enough? What if…

What can I say to someone who has totally lost faith and hope, who is depressed and beaten by life? How to encourage and cheer up such a person? How to show her what a precious being she is? How to open her eyes to her beauty, her power, and her ability to make her life worth living and her dreams come true? It is not easy. The reason we so often fear taking a step out of our comfort zone is that we have no experience of what we find behind it. We hate what we have in here but at least we know what it is. We have to arrive at a certain point when we are getting really mad about the life we lived then and we accumulated so much power that our urge for risking the unknown is so much bigger than the fear of it.

The story of that woman moved me deeply because I was in a similar place – scared of everything, not daring to do something I haven’t done before, and always checking back if what I do is within the expectation of others. I was afraid to be questioned or criticized since I had no voice to back up myself. I rather hid and did what I was told. And even if I dared to speak up, I was dropped, cut off, ignored, or mortified. I was so desperate and with time stopped speaking up in order to not get hurt. I had to reach that point when my frustration was too big to hide. And I went from 0 to 100. I broke down one wall after another. I was sick of being invisible. I was sick of living a life I did not want. I was sick of playing a role that wasn’t me. It was the hard way because changes took place immediately and in every part of my life! New situations and persons showed up, and others changed towards me or left my field. My heart got wider and at one point I was standing tall and knowing that fear was an illusion. It took me 39 years to find that out. But when I did I felt unstoppable. I promised myself that fear would never rule my world and if ever I felt fear I would take it as a sign that I had arrived at the next level to expand myself. I unmasked fear as something that simply shows up when you encounter something you have no experience with yet. That’s really it! Only because we have no experience with something doesn’t mean it harms us or that we would fail. It is only something we did not do before.

If we always backed off when we arrive at a point we’d never been to before, we would never discover something new. We would never expand ourselves. We would never evolve. We would get stuck and our dissatisfaction and frustration only grow and feeds our illusionary fears. Fear is an invention of the mind. Fear doesn’t exist! It is imagination – not more, not less! Yes, there is this intuition, the gut feeling. But that is something different. This fear keeps us from doing something new only because we fear it, is just a useless thought that we misunderstand.

Now, what can we say to someone who is so caught by fear and not able to change something? Look at you now! Who is in your life now? Who must be in your life now? And what is definitely over? Unfair, sad, and painful things happened. We cannot change it – if we only could, but we can’t. The only way of liberation lies in leaving the past where it happened. Don’t keep it alive through your guilty feelings or your permanent thinking. How can we do that, since it seems to surround us all day long? Force yourself to think about things you want to think about. Start dreaming! No one can tell you what you have to think. That’s your privacy. Build air castles. Let your fantasy flow and dwell in it. Whatever you see with your heart is the first step before it is seen by your eyes.

How to make a change? Start with little steps. First, change something small in your daily life. Perhaps take a different sort of bread, choose a different sort of tea, go to a restaurant, or go to see a movie once a week. Give yourselves at least one treat a day. No feelings of guilt. You are worth the best of life. If you did not get it from the outside world, fine! Then give it to yourself! Start to join a class, go to lectures, and take a walk. Just do new things you know you can handle.

Actually, it even doesn’t matter what you do, just do something in order to get the wheel in motion. There is no big or small thing. For the universe, it makes no difference. A change simply is a change, no matter what you change. If you change one step your whole life will reorder. Because one new step brings new ideas and new energies.

The past won’t change – but over time the way you deal with it will.

Check it out, my dear! You can never fail but win the world and your life back!

In Love and Light!