Hi All,
When you hear “I’m free falling” what comes to your mind? Do you think of an exhilarating and awesome experience or do you feel FEAR and think of being out of control?
The other day, as frequently happens, in the final meditation (savasana) after a yoga class, I experienced the glorious and joyous sensation of an endless free fall into the depth of my spirit. I remember the 1st time I had experienced this, I was scarred, did not understand what was happening and felt the need to hold back and not allow the experience to happen. After this “holding back” I regretted having done this and hoped to be able to experience it again as I thought I would respond differently the next time. I recall waiting and waiting for this experience to happen again but I just could not seem to find it or make it happen. Then one day, when I was least expecting it, it happened again. This time I allowed it to happen and just went with the flow. At first it was scary but then it became a freeing and wonderful experience. Since then I regularly allow these types of experiences in my meditations and times of rest and have had the opportunity to connect deeply with myself and experience some really cool stuff that I would not have experienced if I had held onto the fear.
I tell this little story because in times of challenge people tend to hold back, be conservative, act out of fear and not trust in the fact that things happen for a reason. The other point I wanted to make was, the same way the phone never rings when you are sitting by it and staring at it waiting for someone to call, life will not rain upon you it glory and joy if you sit around waiting for it to happen.
Release your fear. Allow things to happen and experience them fully. Confront your challenges head on and be open to what happens. You may find that your biggest
challenges are actually you greatest opportunities.
Now more than ever, live your life fully, love your life fully and be the change you want to see in this world!
Go out and do something nice for someone, give someone a hug and make their day better, smile at someone you don’t know (just because) and trust in the fact that everything happens for a reason.
Even if you do not know why something happened and it does not seem good, try to see the silver lining in every cloud.
I hope that the sunny days of May bring you PRESENSE, GRATITUDE, LOVE, JOY, HEALTH and HAPPINESS.
Many of you may associate chiropractic with back or neck pain but interestingly enough, one of the first things that I see change in many of our practice members (infants through seniors alike) is their MOOD. That is correct, having a healthy nerve system will help improve your mood, reduce your stress and give you a fresh and joyous outlook on life.
Let Stern Chiropractic help guide you and your family to an EXTRAODINARY LIFE of Health, Wealth and Happiness in 2009.
I hope you have enjoyed our newsletter. If you know someone this may help, please share it. This smallest act of sharing can have profound effects for generations to come.
Embracing the Fear of Failure
Breaking out of your comfort zone and facing your mistakes can lead to innovation and stronger relationships.
By: Carlin Flora
“He who never makes mistakes, never makes anything,” goes an English Proverb.
Unless we learn to embrace failure (whether it’s led by an unavoidable mishap, a moral lapse, or a risk miscalculated), we remain snugly tucked inside our comfort zone. The pressure to be perfect leaves us tip-toeing around family members or coasting on automatic pilot at work, feeling safe but stagnated—and not quite alive.
From vaccines to Velcro, many inventions were spawned from accidents, seeming failures. But when Fiona Lee, psychology and business professor at the University of Michigan, explored which conditions help people experiment with novel ideas, she uncovered an interesting phenomenon: “Managers talk a lot about innovation and being on the cutting edge, but on an individual level, many people are not willing to try new things.”
What’s holding us back? A fear of failure.
“Corporate America has very little tolerance for failure,” Lee reports. Compensation is typically based on tasks well-done, not spectacular (and costly) failures that could eventually produce breakthroughs.
Bosses preach innovation, and yet they hover over workers, poised to slap wrists. Lee’s study concluded that rewarding employees who repeatedly try new things and fail leads to more innovation and more long-term success. But the more prevalent mixed-message style of management has employees so scared and rigid that they innovate less than they would have if their bosses had never uttered the word at all.
Even if environmental conditions allow for high failure tolerance, some people will take setbacks to heart instead of to mind. Such people let a disappointment seep into their sense of self like a poison.
University of Washington psychologist Jonathon Brown found that those lacking self-esteem over-generalize their failures to conclude that they are just plain less intelligent and less competent than others. Paradoxically, the best way to build self-esteem is to take action after falling down, to build a reserve of personal efficacy.
Blunders are a necessary component of relationships, too. What’s important is how they are handled. Top marriage researcher John Gottman has famously figured out how to predict divorce by observing couples’ interactions. He found that it’s not how many arguments that foretells an impending split, but rather whether a couple can effectively repair ties in the aftermath of a disagreement.
Everyone messes up. It’s the ability to say “I’m sorry” and to fix the relationships that count.
Buying into the myth of the perfect marriage can encourage couples to avoid conflict. But that renders them devastated when problems inevitably arise. “Look at the craziness of what we spend on weddings to try to make something spotless and flawless to start off the relationship,” says Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman.
“And yet, you can be sure there will be a good fight and bad sex within 24 hours.” Pittman says that rather than working to achieve romantic perfection, people must learn to survive reality together. “A married couple that has never had a fight has missed having to examine themselves, to recognize their own foolishness, to expose their shortcomings and realize that they can be loved anyway.”
Even dramatic missteps such as infidelity can forge a stronger union. While Pittman doesn’t recommend someone go out and have an affair just to shake things up, he insists that once an adulterer has confessed and the affair is over, a great opportunity lies for each partner to discover the real person behind the facade.
Children, too, need to be given some rope to ensure they fail. The teenager whose mother doesn’t let him oversleep and face the consequences of arriving late to school misses a lesson in responsible behavior.
And his mom denies herself the joys of messiness: “I occasionally see people whose children have never gotten into trouble—and they missed the experience of child-raising,” says Pittman.
Perhaps in every realm of life, we should not merely accept failure, but actively go out of our way to fail. Then if we do, we can chalk it up as a success.