Matthieu Ricard
Don't die with your music still inside you!
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Brian Germain has made numerous entertaining and inspiring videos that can be viewed on the following YouTube Channel:

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Food for Thought

Never be afraid to be you. Others will always have something to say about you, whether you are being yourself or not, so you might as well let go of the fear of what others think and express your inner self!

Joy is waiting for you on the other side of your fear. You cannot go around it, however, you must go through it. The incidental discomfort that you may feel is nothing in comparison to the agony of not living the life you were meant to live.

with Loving Appreciation for who you are,

Brian Germain

Greetings!

Welcome to the Transcending Fear Magazine!

May the very concept of transcending fear bring you into alignment with who you truly are, and launch you into the expression of who that is. Be yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you!
 
The Urge to Escape FLIGHT

When we are in fear, we often have a strong impulse to escape, to run away from the situation that is challenging us in order to feel safer. This drive can be a sane one, in the case of a much needed vacation to the beach, or a less beneficial one, such as the repeated choice to inebriate ourselves with drugs, alcohol, or other addictions like television.

When we take flight, we must know where we are going, otherwise we will not know when we have arrived. This is a fundamental flaw in the escape instinct. We do not usually plan where the escape is taking us, nor do we consider the consequential side-effects of our chosen path of retreat. The costs are often steps backward, in the opposite direction of where we ultimately want to go with our lives. Further, when we are in the escape mode, we feel a sense of powerlessness to confront and resolve whatever we are running from.

The impulse to escape from challenges tends to lead us to the path of least resistance in life. We choose the experiences that do not provoke our fear, and thus the experiences that we have from day to day are not the kind that expand us. We therefore keep our living personas the same as they were yesterday, last year, and ten years ago. This state of stagnation is not due to our fear directly, it comes as a result of our preemptive avoidance of challenge.

William James spoke of our aversion to bitter tastes in this way. He pointed out that when we taste something bitter, we make a fairly stereotypical facial expression. When the same item is presented to us again at a later time, we make the same facial expression as we turn away, even though we have not yet tasted the food again. It is this tendency that leads us away from danger, at the expense of the new possibility. We may actually enjoy this thing that we once avoided. We are not the same people we were, and the past need not be the future. If we dare to "taste" the experiences that once provoked our fear-aversion in the past, we open the door for something new to happen; we can expand who we are. By overcoming our fears in this way, one by one, we live with less and less fear in our lives. Further, our relationship to fear changes from one of instinctive avoidance, to one of curiosity and zeal for life that draws us forward into new experiences.


To read more of Brian Germain's Thoughts on fear:
Fearless

Bri and Joshua

As a father, I have come to realize that we are not born with fear. I was programmed to believe, like everyone else, that fear is part of our basic software package. It seems to me that nothing could be further from the truth. It is my experience that fear is something that we learn, both through our unpleasant experiences and the examples of others. We begin our lives without this, the way we were meant to live, absolutely fearless.

In the early part of our lives, we do not regard the thoughts of others, we simply know what we do and don't want. We do not, as young children, worry about negative possibilities, we simply live to explore what is out there. This is the true nature of the human animal. We are fascinated by our surroundings, and desire to squeeze out every last drop of fun out of our experiences. Fear is something that comes in later, and it puts a serious damper on things.

You are just a child, later on. You have lived many moments, and drawn conclusions about life from those experiences. It would appear that long-term memory comes with a great cost. The baggage that we carry from the past holds us back from experiencing life in new ways. It is true that wisdom comes from lessons learned from the past, but when those lessons prevent us from exploring life further, is not wisdom, it is paranoia. The past must be taken with a grain of salt, because, much like salt, it is dead.

The future is what we make it, and if we continually look forward to what is to come, we are more likely to live the way that makes us happiest. Your future is wide open, and nothing but your fear can hold you back from making it better than the past. If you are to re-emerge as the person that you were at the unlimited beginning of your life, you must stop thinking like an adult, and flow into the incredible world around you without reservation. Joy is not just the result of a wonderful life, it is nothing less than the cause of it.

BSG


I am having so much fun doing these Transcending Fear talks, reminding folks of the journey through fear that we are all on. If you have a possibility in your mind about a place for me to talk, please email me at: [email protected]
 
Sincerely,
 

Brian Germain
Germain Seminars and Workshops
/Transcending Fear