Today's
quotation:
Only when we are no longer
afraid do we begin
to live in every experience, painful or
joyous,
to live in gratitude for every moment, to live
abundantly.
Dorothy Thompson
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Today's
Meditation:
I
believe that fear is by far the greatest motivator in
life. How many of our actions are based on our
fears? How many of our reactions are the result of
our fears? Whether we want them to be or not, our
fears are just about the strongest determiners of our
actions that we have in our lives.
That
is, until we let them go and begin to trust life and
living and God, whatever we conceive God to be. The
problem is that most of us have become comfortable with
our fears--because we know them so well, we treat them
almost as if they were old friends, never to be let go of,
and we keep them with us all the time.
But
they aren't our friends, no matter how comfortable they
may feel. They hurt us, and they rob us of many
opportunities to enjoy our lives. I've had friends
like that, too--people who brought me down when I was with
them. It took a great deal of effort to leave those
friendships, for my own good. I tried to change them
into what I thought friendship would be, but that never
worked--in the end, I had to make the hard decision of
taking care of my own spiritual and emotional well-being,
and I stopped seeing certain people. It's only
happened twice, but both times it's been an extremely
important thing for me to do, something that opened up my
growth potential.
I've
left fears behind in the same way. I've recognized
them as destructive and hurtful, and I've decided that
they do not serve me in healthy ways. It's been hard
to do, and there are still several fears hanging on
tenaciously and ruthlessly, but I'm still working at
it. And I'm sure I'll keep working at it until I
die--but it's work that definitely is worth all the
effort.
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