Have you ever been afraid – I mean, really afraid? How did you handle it?
There are all kinds of fear: fear of physical danger, fear of the unknown, fear of the dark.
There’s nothing wrong with fear. It’s an emotion that keeps us safe from threats and is a built-in survival mechanism that all humans need; but the extent to which fear controls our actions is worth considering. We can handle, lessen, or remove fear through our experiences and through personal growth.
How would you describe the soundtrack of your life?
What is the nature of the sounds—both those inside your head and those reaching your ears—that you hear moment-by-moment and day-to-day?
Do you ever experience silence? Are you comfortable with it?
My soundtrack is very musical. Music helps motivate me and influences my mood. I listen to music in the car, when I exercise, and at other times where I might have chosen silence. But silence is never really silent, is it?
The Universe is talking to us all the time; it’s up to us to listen.
We all have signals in our life that let us know something is not quite right—signals that we should acknowledge and on which we should act.
These signals include how we feel, physically and emotionally. They also include how people react to us or the state of our relationships, how we spend our time, our energy level, and our ability to focus. Each of these can say a lot about the state of our lives.
Do we pay attention to these signals? Do we even know what they are?
It’s very interesting to see how the lingo changes through the years and how phrases that are firmly associated with a certain subset of society (e.g. surfers, bikers, environmental scientists) explode into common usage.
For example, I started thinking about this entry and have since noticed that I use the word “dude” a lot.
It’s not intentional. I have no idea where it came from.
I’m not proud of it.
But is it in affectation? I can honestly say that I do not say the word “dude” to elicit any specific response or present myself in any particular light. But it begs the question, when is a figure of speech (or action or fashion statement) an affectation?