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To order Brian Germain's Book:
"Transcending Fear"
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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
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Turning Emotion into Motion
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 the 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
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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 |
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