   Protecting Your Flow: How Fear Blocks Creativity
by
DailyOM
To understand how fear blocks
creativity, take a moment to imagine yourself telling a story. First, imagine telling the story to someone you love and who
loves you. You probably feel warmth and energy as you fill in the details of your tale to your friend’s delight. Now,
imagine telling the same story to someone who, for whatever reason, makes you uncomfortable.
The wonderful twists and
turns, the fine points and colorful images that unfolded in your mind for your friend probably won’t present themselves.
Instead of warmth, energy, and creativity, you will probably feel opposite sensations and a desire to close down. When we
feel unsafe, whether we fear being judged, disliked, or misunderstood, our creative flow
stops. Alternately, when we feel safe, our creativity unfolds like a beautiful flower, without conscious effort.
Knowing this, we can maximize our creative potential by creating the conditions that inspire our
creativity. In order to really be in the flow, we need to feel safe and unrestricted. However, achieving this is not as simple
as avoiding people who make us feel uncomfortable.
Sometimes we can be alone
in a room and still feel totally blocked. When this happens, we know we have come up against elements in our own psyches that
are making us feel fearful. Perhaps we are afraid that in expressing ourselves we will discover something we don’t want
to know, or unleash emotions or ideas that we don’t want to be responsible for. Or maybe we’re afraid we’ll
fail to produce something worthy.
When you’re up against fear, internal or
external, ritual can be a powerful—and creative—antidote. Before you sit down to be creative, try casting a circle
of protection around yourself. Visualize yourself inside a ring of light, protective fire, or angels.
Imagine that this protective
energy emanates unconditional love for you and wants to hear, see, and feel everything you have to express. Take a moment
to bathe in the warmth of this feeling and then fearlessly surrender yourself to the power that flows through you.
10 Lies We Think are Love
by Carol Tuttle, MRET
What is real love?
Real love is an energy that supports us in feeling good. When we feel genuine self-love and self-worth we experience ourselves as good enough and capable. There is a reverence and humility that accompanies this deep knowing that we are valuable just for being our unique self.
Our worth is not dependent
on our doings or our belongings. When genuine self-love and self-worth is present and alive within us, we attract love and respect from others. We literally draw to us the energy of love from others. We offer the energy of love and receive the energy of love. We feel very whole and complete in this state of being.
Why we need it.
When we are born we are completely dependent on others for our survival both
physically and emotionally. Most of us grew up with our physical needs being met adequately and emotional needs being met sporadically or not at all.
We come in to this world with the need to be validated that we are loveable. We are looking for someone, primarily our parents, to tell us that we are important, we are loved and cherished and that we count free of any conditions. Even though our spirit knows we are loveable, our cognitive physical self needs to hear that.
We are looking to be validated
all through our infancy, childhood and teen years as we move through different developmental stages. If we were not given
that message and our environment caused us to feel threatened or unsafe, we are still looking to have the message that we are loveable given to us as adults. We are stuck in patterns of co-dependency looking for love and validation outside of ourselves.
Why we make it so hard to experience it.
When we were little and love was not as available or predictable we learned to live without it. We subconsciously created ways of thinking and behaving that helped us feel
safer in what seemed like a random world. You may have tried different things to get more love and support you in feeling more loveable. Some of those ways worked and you did get more attention. To this day you may subconsciously still be believing that you need these patterns in order to be loveable.
When they didn't work we
adapted to limiting beliefs, held at a deep subconscious level, that tell us we are really not loveable. We often sabotage the experience we want the most because it is so unfamiliar and at that deep level we really believe we don't deserve it, that we are not worth it, or that the love is not real.
The 10 lies we think are love:
1. Food is love
Our bodies require love through appropriate touch. When that need has not been met we often turn to food to fill us. The root cause of all addictions is the body's need for attention. Food feels good to the body. The body will begin to believe food is love and continually seek it out to get the feeling of sweetness and fullness that the energy of real love gives us when it is open and flowing in our being.
2. Sex
is love
This can play out in a way that supports people in fearing, hating and despising sex, or becoming addicted to it. If you were sexually abused or prematurely affected by sexual experiences,
it is common to have the deeper belief of "I can only be loved for sex." Sexual encounters can feel abusive and leave you with a feeling of being used.
Sexual addictions are supported by the bodies need for affection and it has come through sexual encounters. Again the body needs touch and support. If you were sexually abused as a child or that pattern is still alive from generations past, your body may hold the belief of "my body is bad because it feels good." It goes through a cycle of feeling starved for love, getting a quick fix with sex, and then feeling bad for satisfying it's need for love with sex.
3. Money is love
This pattern can get set up in families with money. When emotional love is not flowing freely, money is often used as a substitute. This can set up the siblings as rivals because they subconsciously
know that there is not enough emotional love to go around and they must vie for mom and dad's money and possessions. Mom and dad's money and possessions represent the
energy of real love that they have never had. As adults money represents security. Security supports us in feeling safe. This can also feel like love. The more money you have, the more safe you feel, the more loved you feel.
4. I have to be sick or ill to be loved
If you were given more attention when you were sick or ill as a child, you may
still believe that you need this pattern to get noticed. If you were healthy and well you risk the experience of no one caring about you. Doctors can feel like surrogate parents. They give you attention, advice, and hopefully encouragement. All the
things you needed as a child. Your sickness may be a way to keep you from living your life fully or taking responsibility for your life because
you feel incapable and afraid. It is something to fall back on when you need to escape and want to hide.
5. I have to suffer
to get love
People in abusive relationships are creating this pattern and are not familiar
with healthy love and how it operates in a relationship. If you were beaten, slapped, hit, physically punished in your childhood or that pattern
has been in your family, you may believe that love is being hurt. You will even sabotage healthy relationships to create this so you can feel your familiar experience again.
6. I have to fix people to be loved
Many people have a deeper belief that if they are not helping people get better they have no value. If they have no value, they cannot be loveable. The problem with this pattern is if you need to fix sick and dysfunctional people in order to feel loveable, you will continually attract these people into your life and they will not get well. You need them to be "unfixable" so you can stay "loveable."
7. I have to control you to make it safe to let you love me
Control is one of the biggest patterns in relationships. The deeper belief is "I will control you before you control me." It is common for two controllers to be together in a relationship both only
seeing the other in the controlling pattern. I have worked with numerous couples where both are controllers. I will ask them
separately " who do you believe controls the relationship?" They will always say, the other one does. Blame is a big part of the controller's experience. Victim energy is at the root of the pattern. At a deeper level if you still
believe you are a victim, you may use control to create a feeling of safety to prevent yourself from ever being a victim again.
8. I have to please others to be loved
This pattern is often the other common opposite of a controller pattern. It is
more common for women to play this role in a relationship with a controlling man. In this pattern the person always is thinking
of other people before they think of themselves. Everything they think or say is processed with the underlying thought "what
will other's think, what do other's want, what do I have to do or say to make sure they are happy." Chronic Fatigue and other
energy depletion disorders are common with this pattern.
9. If I let you love me, you will leave me
Abandonment is at the core of this pattern. If you were abandoned
as a child you may fear that the people you love get hurt, die or go away. In order to prevent this from happening you will not let a relationship go very far or you will
sabotage it first. It is common to hold the deeper belief "I'll abandon you before you abandon me" because you are still believing that every relationship ends in abandonment so you might as well be in control of it. That way it doesn't hurt as much and it is more predictable.
10. Love hurts, relationships are painful
This belief will only support you in creating unhealthy, painful relationships. You will continue to attract people that you create a lot of pain with. You will support your relationships in being painful in the way you perceive them, think about them and the choices you make in them. You
will go from one relationship to another feeling victimized and hurt wondering when real love will come your way. Or you will believe your stuck in a relationship that can never work and feel you will never be happy.
What
we can do to heal these patterns
The first step is to understand that your beliefs create your experience. So whatever you believe either subconsciously and consciously is what you are getting in life. If you don't like what you are getting change your
beliefs. Many of these beliefs are at a subconscious level and are generational beliefs. That means that we come from a long line of people that have carried the belief and have created the experience that matches it. Limiting beliefs are also rooted in our childhood experiences.
You have a lot of opportunity
to take control of the phenomenal power of your mind to release these old beliefs and create new ones. If you are really stuck I recommend a tool like Rapid Eye Technology that releases the energy that supports these old beliefs and patterns staying in place.
Look at your relationship experiences and notice
what you keep experiencing. What keeps getting recreated in your life. This will tell you a lot about what relationship beliefs you hold. Change your relationships by changing your beliefs. I recommend my book Remembering Wholeness: A Personal Handbook for Thriving in the 21st Century to help you with this.
Healing the lies so we can love ourselves and be loved
Everyone carries limiting beliefs and patterns that they came to clear. In clearing these energies we heal the lies that we thought were truth about ourselves. We thought they were true because we kept having the experiences that made us think "this keeps happening
to me so it must be true!" As you change your belief, you change your life, and understand now that you can create whatever you want.
I
believe that God set in place within each of us the real energy of love. It is a powerful energy just waiting to be awakened. Another person cannot awaken it. Only you hold the key to the energy
of real love inside of you. As you open and honor this energy by loving yourself, forgiving yourself and being kind and patient with yourself, you are then free to receive the real love others have to offer you. If you are a controller and/or a blamer, the first step for you is to take accountability for your
life and own your life creation.
No one can create your life but you. God wants to co-create a life of joy, wellness and prosperity with you. He cannot do it for you, only with you. Chose now to
create healthy loving, honest relationships that add value to your life. Be willing to end any relationships that cannot be healthy. Hold as your motto or mantra, "I am worthy of real love. I deserve to be loved and admired by a healthy loving person. I am attracting people that can and want to create healthy loving relationship with me. I am ending relationships that cannot be healthy. God loves me and I love myself."
Author's Bio
Carol Tuttle is the author of Remembering Wholeness, A
Personal
Handbook for Thriving in the 21st Century. She has assisted thousands in healing their lives through her writings
and work as a Master Rapid Eye Therapist.
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Breaking the Cycle of Unhealthy Relationships
by Dr. Kevin B. Skinner
Repeats are nice if you are
the Los Angeles Lakers or Lance Armstrong, but when it comes to unhealthy relationships, forget it. Nobody wants to repeat the same mistakes over and over. However, when it comes to relationships,
far too many people marry for the second or third or fourth time and find that they have married the same type of person they
previously divorced.
Recently, I was talking with a very discouraged woman. She had
been married many times and was sick and tired of marrying the same type of man. Each husband had their own unique qualities
but her marriages were the same. Her husbands were emotionally unavailable and she didn’t know how to communicate her
needs to them without pushing them away.
For many months this woman
had done some intense soul searching. She had read every book she could on relationships. She had sought professional counseling.
She sincerely wanted to break the cycle in which she found herself.
Finally, she came to the conclusion
that she needed to look at her own patterns. She began asking questions such as, “How have I contributed to my relationship
problems?” and “What type of man do I need to marry to break this cycle?” and “What are the things
that I must have in my relationships before I get too involved?”
As is the case with most self-exploration,
she realized that she hadn’t ever analyzed what she wanted before getting into a serious relationship. Even more important
she found that she had ignored many of her own needs because she was always trying to please the people she was dating. This
new awareness helped her see that she had dismissed many “red flags” that had occurred early in her relationships
because she felt such a strong need to be wanted by someone.
With well over 50%
of all second marriages ending in divorce, many people who have experienced multiple marriages are beginning to wonder whether
they can find the intimacy that they desire. Many become depressed and lose hope. They ask questions like this, “Will
I ever find someone to be happy with?” Or “Is there something wrong with me?” Many people have asked me
these questions and I have pondered how to respond. I believe the following ideas will help answer these questions.
Create Change
Whenever we get stuck in patterns that we
don’t like or that are unhealthy for us, we have to learn how to break the cycle. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t learn from history you
will repeat it.” Therefore, one of the best ways to create change in your life is to sit down and do some personal self-analysis.
Questions you may want to ask yourself include:
a) Do I seem to date the same
type of people? Make a list of the characteristics of the people you date. Are they emotionally healthy or unhealthy?
b) Do I do the same unhealthy things in my relationships (i.e., become jealous, become overly critical)?
c) What do I need to change
to be more successful in my relationships?
d) Do I date people who are
in need of me? Are you caught in the cycle of fixing others?
As you review these
questions take some time to write down your answers. Look at them seriously and identify the things that you need to change
to be more successful in creating the necessary changes in your life.
Healthy Relationships
Have you ever wondered what a healthy relationship looks like? In our class “Behind the
Dating Mask,” we ask this question. It is very interesting that in almost every class one or two participants raise
their hand and say that they don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. If you don’t know what a healthy
relationship looks like, it will be very challenging for you to create it. You need to identify what happens in healthy relationships.
Here are a few questions for you to consider.
a) What are the characteristics of
a healthy relationship?
b) What can I do to make my
relationships better?
c) Have my past relationships
been healthy? If not, why? If yes, what was happening to make it good?
Once you have
written down your answers to these questions, practice implementing them in your everyday interaction with those who are around
you. In general, people who know how to have many healthy relationships succeed in their dating and marriage relationships.
Create a Safe Environment
One of the most
important elements in every relationship is creating an environment where two people can grow. If you look at your past relationships,
you will probably find that the environment wasn’t safe. By safe I mean you couldn’t
express yourself without worry or concern that what you said would be rejected or dismissed. A safe environment is what makes
two people willing to try.
Consider the friendships that you have. Is it not the
environment or the climate that makes you open up and feel safe and valued? The goal for each relationship you form should
be to create a safe environment so you can grow and develop in your relationship. If you find that you are in an unsafe environment you should give serious thought to why you are willing to stay in an unsafe environment.
If you are dating someone and would like to assess whether your relationship is healthy or not,
I would invite you to test your relationship. You can do this at (http://www.testyourrelationship.com) This relationship assessment tool will help you identify whether
your partner is capable of having a healthy relationship. You will learn to identify the “red flags” in your relationships
so that you can look objectively at the people you date. It will also allow you to assess the climate of your relationship.
Good luck on breaking your cycle of unhealthy relationships.
Author's Bio Dr. Kevin B. Skinner is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Certified
Family Life Educator. He has taught dating and relationship classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Brigham Young
University. Dr. Skinner's goal is to help individuals and couples learn how to improve their relationship skills.
Website:
http://www.testyourrelationship.com
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