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.
It can be quite frustrating when we can’t seem to get our point across—we all face this from time to time.
“Why can’t you understand what I’m saying?!”
“Why do you keep arguing with me?”
“You’re not hearing me!”
It can be very easy to take it personally—to question the other person’s motives. It can be a short journey to anger, frustration, and bitterness.
The other person may fully understand your point—but disagree with it—and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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?
The truth can be elusive.
Some believe that there are many factors that influence how we interpret what is or isn’t true, including our values, experiences, culture, and condition.
Our truth may not be the same as someone else’s truth. Each of us has our own reality based on what brought us to where we are in our lives and how we see the world.
When the truth of two different people is revealed as different, it can seem as if one or the other person is intentionally obscuring the truth (aka lying). Of course, some people do tend to give truth (even their own truth) a wide berth. So how can we tell if people are misrepresenting what they believe to be true, or if their reality just differs from our reality?
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?