Transcending Fear Newsletter
IN THIS ISSUE
FEATURED ARTICLE
Turning Emotion into Motion
QUICK LINKS
JOIN OUR LIST
Join Our Mailing List
FEATURED ARTICLE
Cover
To order Brian Germain's Book:
"Transcending Fear"
go to: www.
BrianGermain.com
or amazon.com
 
New Book!
Green-Light Your Life
Brian Germain's Upcoming Book
Available Dec 2008!
Issue: Oct 2008
Bri Head Down
Greetings!

Welcome to Brian Germain's Newsletter!

The Transcending Fear Organization is a group of like-minded advocates of the following philosophy: By taking on challenges that scare us, we reap innumerable benefits by transcending perceived limitation.

I welcome you to explore the ideas presented here, and pass them along if you enjoy what you have read.

Peace be with you,
Brian Germain
Turning Emotion into Motion
Brian in Doorthe following is an excerpt from Brian Germain's New Book:
Greenlight Your Life

 
I have spent much of my adult life studying the topic of fear and how it affects us. My initial conclusion, one that I have preached for many years, is that fear, quite simply, is bad for us. Intense emotion, I concluded, robs the brain of its access to those necessary logical functions that provide us with constructive responses to any given situation. I have seen the catastrophic effects of full-blown fear, and there appear to be no redeeming qualities to the overt expression of this and other negative emotions. After careful consideration and observation of my own experience, I now see that I was only half-correct.

I believe that emotion, if allowed to carry us without the guidance of logical thought processes, wisps us away to a set of thoughts and behaviors that cannot easily be controlled until the emotion is gone. Furthermore, we cannot see our way out of the problem that has led us to this negative emotional experience while we are under the influence of the emotion. We are in the wrong mindset for creating solutions.

From the perspective of fear, anger and other negative emotional experiences, I stand by my original conclusions. Allowing negative emotions to control our actions cannot lead us to where we want to go, nor is it the most effective tool for avoiding what we do not want. This is not a constructive state of mind, and it can therefore only create destruction.

However, I have also come to realize that emotions can speak to us in ways that logic cannot. Emotions provide us with the essential information that empowers us to make more profound changes in our lives than logic can ever hope to do. The trouble is, the information comes to us packaged in an onslaught of defensive thinking that is contractive. That is to say, it is limiting, and assumes that the worst-case scenario is on the verge of playing out. At the very least, the thoughts and expectations that fear and negative emotions lead me to never seem to include the best-case scenario, thus significantly reducing the chances that it will occur.

As a skydiving instructor, I have noticed that excessive fear tends to cause my students to make rash decisions that often result in injuries. Or, even worse, they do absolutely nothing, which is a bad choice when there is a planet racing up at you. It is therefore reasonable to assert that fear is something that we need to mitigate. Finding ways to counteract negative emotions is therefore paramount in our success as a human being.

In my experience, the fastest way out of intense negative emotions is by letting go of thought altogether. I have found great success with the use of meditation and other grounding practices to help my students calm down and allow their physiological experience to relax so that their minds can begin to work rationally again. By emptying the mind of all thought, we are less driven by the force of the emotion. From there, we are open to better possibilities. The better we are at the process of letting go of negative thoughts, the sooner we can get back to the job of being the champion of the best-case scenario.

Although I still hold that this process is essential to avoiding the negative side effects of intense emotional experiences, I have also recognized that without emotion, we are not complete human beings. While striving to transcend our negative thinking, we must remember to explore what the emotion was trying to tell us.

We come to the realizations that guide our lives through many different processes. Often this involves the kind of careful, methodical appraisal that can only occur within the realm of calm experience. Nevertheless, an equally important part of us requires the nebulous workings of emotional thinking to bring us to the realization of how we truly feel and what we really want.

Our emotions often direct us to what our reason would have us avoid. When our rational left-brains govern our thought processes, we fail to consult our inner wisdom, gleaned from the broader perspective of our deeper awareness of what we truly believe in. We must therefore learn to blend our "sane," reason-based thoughts with the wordless feelings of the emotional self.

This is the stickiest zone of human experience. It would be much easier to teach that emotion is messy, irrational, and should be avoided at all costs. This oversimplification leads us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly, there are emotional processes that are destructive, and lead us to make things worse by acting on impulse. However, some emotional thoughts give us the power to reject what we hate, and to create experiences that we love. When we feel this kind of authentic inspiration, we must allow it to fill us with power and purpose. Then we must turn this feeling into action. This is the difference between avoiding emotion and using it to our benefit.

We must get our hands dirty. The clean feeling of an emotionless existence is impotent. If we are to step beyond the fear of our emotions to become extraordinary human beings who actually do what we came here to do, we must allow ourselves to acknowledge the wisdom of our emotions and convert this potential energy into positive kinetic flow. Otherwise, we will be like a boat with its sails down, unable to navigate the world using the power of our passion.

Emotion is complicated, but it makes us who we are. Emotions give us information about who we are and what we like and dislike. If we dwell upon negative emotions, however, we find ourselves trapped into seeing only problems and obstacles. Only when we deliberately choose to be positive people, and focus on what we want for ourselves, can we begin to use emotion to drive us forward into authentic experience and a life worth living.

What it comes down to is learning how to choose which thoughts to follow and develop, and which ones we leave aside. When we can do this, we become focused in our efforts, and steadfast in our direction. Once this happens, there is a shift, and we find ourselves living the life that we always wanted to live more of the time than ever before. When you harness the power of your mind, there is pretty much nothing you cannot do.

-Brian Germain



If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to forward it to your friends and family. If you have already read Transcending Fear, we still need more reviews on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. This is a grass-roots moment, and we truly need your help!
 
Peace and Love,
 

Brian Germain
Transcending Fear