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Fear… is it stopping you?

When you get down to it, we basically go back and forth between two basic emotions: love and fear.

Fear can be healthy (fear of walking into traffic) but most of the time, it’s an unreal movie we are playing in our head.

The reason I bring this up is I imagine if you are doing these daily risk exercises, you are coming up against fear. By the way, how are you doing with the exercises? Are you getting what you need?

Today, I have a simple question for you. Please ponder it. And find a way to act on it.

What risks would you take if you weren’t afraid?

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Why do you hold onto unproductive relationships?

Some relationships feed us and make us better people and others just drain us. It’s obvious why we maintain the good ones, but why do we hold onto bad friends, lovers, and relatives?

Guilt? Fear of being alone? Thoughts that one day we’ll get something from these people? Afraid of hurting them? Forget it. If an emotional tie is no longer serving you, then it’s no longer serving you.

Think of it this way – relationships are like bonfires – they require constant oxygen and firewood (ie. love and attention.) When we keep a bunch of fires burning because we’re afraid to let them die out, (I’ll call you soon, we really have to get together) it just sucks up our life force. There’s only so much fuel we can give out at one time.

Imagine if you could pour all of your love, compassion and oxygen into the ones that you are absolutely committed to (or would like to be committed to.)

It’s a big risk to let those little fires burn out. But the benefit is that it frees up your energy to devote to building up other fires that do serve you.

As you’re reading this, what person is flashing through your mind? Maybe it’s time to let that fire burn out.

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Laziness… is it negative?

I want to make sure we are clear on the idea of laziness. Even though the laziness itself doesn’t seem to be so negative, it’s the seed of remaining into the self-alone, which leads to sadness, feelings of worthlessness, anger, jealousy … .

Today, here are some ways you can choose to go outside yourself and inject a little love and effort:

-better the relationship with your spouse, family, friends

-manifest a good intention

-help your family, your community

-think about what you learned today and how you can improve

-fight bad thoughts instead of allowing them to continue

-develop discipline

-get into the gym

-watch what you are putting in your mouth

-pray

-read Zohar

-help another worse off than you

-break a bad habit

Take your pick.

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The Right Action… When you see it, do you jump into it?

What we’re talking about in these dailies is whenever we see an opportunity to do the right thing, the right restriction, the right giving, the right sharing, the right treatment for our bodies, the right discipline, we don’t want to let any thought and space come between the opportunity and the action. Just jump and do it. Grab the opportunity.

The spiritual law is that as you train yourself to jump right away into action, without giving any space for doubts or procrastination, gradually it becomes second nature and we love to do it. We look forward to emotional risks the way we look forward to going to a movie. If we’re late for a movie, we hurry into the theater, running toward the movie, right?

Keep running towards the biggest confrontations and fears and challenges in your life. Do it over and over and over and over until it becomes part of you. Rush into action!

What’s your risk today?
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Lazy? Or just plain unmotivated?

One holiday, a few years back, a bunch of students were up late (about 2 o’clock in the morning) celebrating. Some were getting tired and started to sit down. My father and teacher, Rav Berg, spoke to us for a second,

“Think about people who drive or fly many hours to go to Las Vegas. They arrive in Las Vegas very tired, but when they’re in front of the table they don’t think for a second about being tired until it’s morning. If they can be so energetic until the next morning, and have so much power when it’s total stimulation for the self-alone, can’t we bring ourselves to that state with such enormous connection with the Light?”

Yesterday I spoke about laziness and the Rav’s point is our laziness is conditional. When it comes to doing things for the self-alone, we’re super-motivated. But when it comes to things that require stretching outside of ourselves, there’s going to be resistance.

Today, act with passion, energy, and enthusiasm. This is how you break the laziness! All the different reasons we have for not taking risks are just intellectual tricks our dark side plays on us. Don’t accept those thoughts – push back!