The Mastery of Life Blog

Fear is created by resisting a future event. The more you resist a future event, the bigger your fear. The bigger your fear, the more you act destructively and the more you create the very event that you fear.

To have any fear loses its power, do the opposite of what creates it. Instead of resisting the future event, be willing for your fear to come true, not in your actions, but in your heart. Restore your inner peace and your ability to see clearly. Then do whatever you need to do.

To learn more about how to do this, read the article on How to let go.

What do you see when you look in the face of someone who is totally willing to be vulnerable? You see love and happiness. The words you would use to describe this person are the same words that you would use to describe the experience of love.

When the experience of love is present, life works. You are happy, alive and free. You feel good about yourself and good about life. You radiate a very positive energy and great things happen around you. This is the essence of who you are.

When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, this experience of love comes forth. People feel empowered around you and great things happen. You also vaporize opposition and resistance.

Notice how you feel when you are with someone who has little or no walls of protection. You feel loved and empowered. Now notice how you feel when you are with someone whose walls are thick. You feel unloved and defensive. Which person would you rather be with? Whose well being are you more interested in?

We put up our walls of protection thinking that this will somehow protect us from getting hurt, but it doesn’t. In fact, it produces the opposite result. Instead of protecting us, our walls push love away and create resistance against us. Our greatest protection is love, not walls.

When you let your walls down, you create an environment of love where people feel safe and can be vulnerable around you. In relationships, when both of you have your walls down, you make a beautiful, heart to heart connection. When you keep your walls up, this connection is impossible.

Incidentally, being willing to be vulnerable doesn’t mean that you need to be a doormat or let the train roll over you. Willingness is a state of mind and is totally separate from your actions. In your actions, do whatever you need to do. Just do it with an open heart.

We put up our walls of protection to keep from getting hurt, but what side of the wall is the hurt on? It’s on the inside. Our walls of protection don’t keep the hurt out, they keep the hurt in.

Be willing to be hurt, again and again. Let the hurt come and let it go. As you become willing to be vulnerable, you create an environment of love. People feel safe around you and start expressing their love in return. So be willing to be vulnerable. Express your love and watch what happens.

For most of us, the holidays are so full of activities and requirements that we can no longer live our lives the same way. The distractions and influences are so powerful, they pull us out of our reality.

Eventually the holidays end and we go back to our normal lives, but now something is different. Our reality has been disrupted and is a little unsettled. This creates an opportunity to change both our reality and our lives. This opportunity for change gets magnified by the fact that we are entering a new year.

Subconsciously, a new year represents a new beginning. This makes change even easier. If we don’t seize this opportunity and make the changes we want, we will go back to our old reality and repeat the past.

So what changes do you want in your life? How do you want your life to be? What problem areas do you want to get resolved? What passion do you want to pursue? Take a few minutes and do some daydreaming on how you want your life to be. This is important because getting clear on what you want opens a door to new possibility.

Another suggestion is to make a list of all the areas of your life that don’t work and start the process of handling each one. Most of these areas can be resolved with a little effort. Other areas seem to stick around no matter what we do. We feel powerless and unable to do much about them. Fortunately, these areas can also get resolved.

Difficult areas can get resolved because ultimately, they are not the problem. They are the symptom. Whenever an area of life isn’t working, there is an underlying condition that is fueling the problem. We are fighting the truth of the way something is. Instead of focusing on what needs to be done based on the facts of the situation, our focus is on fighting the situation.

This creates a state of fear, upset and tunnel vision. It destroys our ability to find solutions and it forces us to act in a way that magnifies the problem. The moment you surrender to the truth and focus on what need to be done, solutions appear and this area of life starts clearing up. To learn more about how to resolve problem areas, read Clean Up Your Life.

You can also subscribe to our free weekly ecourse. Each lesson provides a powerful insight and suggested action to take. As you work with the lessons, you change your life.

You have the ability to create an incredible life, but this won’t happen by itself. There are concepts to learn and action to take. Our job is to support you in having your life be as great as it can be. We offer workshops, a bookstore and individual support. Give us a call.

When we get upset, we become full of negative emotion. We don’t notice this emotion, but it’s there and it totally destroys our effectiveness. It keeps us from seeing clearly and it forces destructive behavior. It also destroys love and makes life very uncomfortable.

When this negative emotion is present, we are guaranteed to make our situation worse. Unfortunately, we don’t notice this emotion. All our focus is on our circumstances.

We focus on our circumstances because subconsciously, we perceive them as a treat. To avoid this perceived threat, we fight, resist, hang on, and withdraw. Almost anything we do in a state of upset sabotages our lives.

If you could be free of this negative emotion, you would see your situation clearly and could take effective action. You would also create an environment where solutions and opportunity show up.

If you are ever upset or in a difficult situation, restoring inner peace should be your top priority. The first step in accomplishing this is to separate the circumstances from the emotion. You do this by noticing their different locations.

The circumstances are outside of you. The emotion is inside of you. They are never connected in reality. They are only connected in our mind. When we connect the circumstances and the emotion, we lose our power. We give it to the circumstances. The moment you separate them, the circumstances lose power and you get your power back.

The next step is to get rid of the emotion. You do this by diving into it. Feel the hurt deliberately and purposefully. Feel it because you choose to. Reach in and pull it out.

Feel the hurt of the circumstances and the deeper hurt of feeling worthless, not worth loving, failure, or whatever your core issue is. If there aren’t any real tears, fake the tears. Faking the tears coupled with an exaggeration of the emotion is just as powerful as the real tears. Let the hurt come and let it go.

A good way to see how this works is to look at little children. When they get hurt, they cry. Then, when they get through crying, there is no more hurt. Little children are able to release their negative emotion because they feel their hurt willingly. When you feel your hurt willingly like a child, because you choose to, the hurt comes and goes. You restore both your peace and your effectiveness.

To learn more about how to release negative emotion and restore your effectiveness, attend our workshops, visit our bookstore, and schedule an appointment with Bill Ferguson.

Evil is the collective hurt of the world. It’s the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that creates all our destructive behavior. If you could take away the hurt, there would be nothing left but love, and in love there can be no evil.

The darkness has no power over the light. The darkness is very real, but when the light is present, the darkness disappears. Our job is to bring the light to every aspect of our lives.

Any thoughts?

If you have a relationship or any area of life that isn’t working, there is a truth that you are fighting. Something is the way that it is and you are resisting it. Let me explain.

At any moment, your life is exactly the way that it is. The people in your life are the way that they are. The circumstances of your life are the way that they are and you are the way that you are. Everything may change tomorrow, but at any moment, what’s so is always what’s so.

When you are at peace with the truth, you can see your situation clearly and can focus on what needs to be done based on the truth. For example, my wife and I have a cat and that cat doesn’t bark. I can yell at the cat and plead with the cat, but no matter what I do, the cat still won’t bark.

This is the truth and my feelings about it are totally irrelevant. If I am at peace with this truth, I can put my focus on what needs to be done. If I want to hear barking, I can stop pressuring the cat and go get a dog.

Look at the areas of your life that work great. These are areas where you can flow with whatever happens. You may not like what happens, but you don’t get hooked and you can take appropriate action.

Now look at the areas of your life that don’t work. These are area where you are fighting the truth. Notice the direction of your focus. Instead of focusing on what needs to be done based on the truth of the way your situation is, your focus is on fighting the truth.

When you do this, you destroy your ability to find solutions and you act in a way that magnifies the problem. If I am fighting the cat for not barking, I will create a nightmare in my relationship with the cat and there will be no focus on getting a dog.

Every relationship and every area of life that isn’t working is an area where you are fighting the truth. Take a moment and notice that this is true.

So why do we fight the truth? We fight the truth because the truth hurts. It strikes a nerve. I triggers the childhood hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure, or some other form of feeling not okay.

It’s not the truth that we are this way. It’s just a hurt from the past, but it’s a hurt that runs our lives. The more you are able to heal this hurt, the more you can flow with life and the better your life will work.

Learn how to find and heal this hurt. Learn how to flow with the truth. Get individual support.

When you get upset, you close down inside. You get tunnel vision
and lose your ability to see clearly. All you can do is fight,
resist, hang on and withdraw. You destroy love and make your
situation worse. Upsets are very destructive.

If you could be free of your upsets, you would be very effective.
You would see life clearly and could see what needs to be done. The
first step in accomplishing this is to discover that upsets are not
caused by what happens. They are caused by fighting what happens.

To see this in your life, find a time when you were upset.
Didn’t something happen? Didn’t it happen no matter how you
felt about it?

Notice how irrelevant your feelings were. It still happened. Now
notice what would happen to the upset if somehow, you were totally
at peace with what happened. There would be no upset. The moment
you take away the resisting, the upset disappears.

Here is another example. Notice what would happen if I spilled a
glass of water on you. You would be wet and you would be wet
whether you liked it or not. Being wet is like the circumstances of
your life. Something happened and your feelings about it don’t
change a thing. You are still wet.

If you are at peace with the truth of being wet, you will have
peace of mind and will be very effective in handling your
situation. If you fight the truth of being wet, you will be upset,
and the more you fight being wet, the more upset you will be.

Whether you have peace or upset, you are still wet. Your state of
mind has nothing to do with your circumstances. Your state of mind
depends solely on whether you are at peace with the truth or
fighting it.

When you surrender to the truth of the way your situation is, you
restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness. You see
your situation clearly and can see what needs to be done. Instead
of resisting and making your situation worse, you can put your
focus on finding solutions.

We fight the truth because the truth strikes a nerve. It
reactivates a suppressed hurt from the past. We’ll talk more
about this later.

If you have two people together, you can expect to have disagreements. How you handle these disagreements determines the quality of your relationship. Most of us handle them in a way that is very destructive.

We get defensive and draw sides against the other person. Then we fight to have our side prevail. We believe that if we fight hard enough, our side will win. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

Everything you do to have your side win is calculated to have the other side lose. This puts the other person on the defensive and forces that person to fight you. Then you get upset and fight the other person even more. Then the other person gets upset and fights you even more.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of conflict that creates needless suffering and makes it very difficult to resolve anything. Fortunately, this can easily be avoided.

To learn how, let’s start by looking at the nature of arguments. Whenever there is an argument, there are two people who are forcefully pushing their point of view on the other. No one is listening. Nothing is getting resolved and the cycle of conflict is escalating dramatically.

The key to ending an argument and resolving a dispute is very simple. Stop talking and listen. It is physically impossible to have an argument with someone who listens.

The next time you are in an argument, listen to what the other person is saying and hear it from that person’s point of view. You don’t have to like what the person is saying or even agree with it. You don’t have to do anything. Just listen.

Once you have fully let in the other person’s point of view, there will be an opening for you to express yours. Once both of you have said everything you want to say, you can have a conversation about solutions.

To find a solution, look for a plan that works for everyone. When you do this, you dissolve opposition and resistance. You also find solutions. In fact, you will be surprised at how fast you find them. The solutions are always there, we just don’t see them. We don’t see them because we don’t look for them. We are too busy arguing.

Someone sent me the following question:

“I love your e-course lessons so far. I am having some trouble with lesson #19. I am confused about being willing to be hurt again and again. What situations is it good to do that and which ones aren’t? I have the Mastery of life course with the CDs and the 3 books. Which chapters speak to this issue? Thank you for your help.”

Here is my response:

It is always important for you to be willing to be hurt. It is also important for you to be willing for every one of your fears to come true — Not in your actions, but in your heart. In your actions, do everything you can to make sure a fear doesn’t happen, but in your heart, be willing. “If it happens it happens. I’ll deal with it.” This restores your inner peace, your ability to see clearly, and your effectiveness.

Willingness is a state of mind and is totally separate from your actions. “Willingness” removes the fear, upset and tunnel vision so you can see what action you need to take.

Be willing to be hurt again and again and ironically, the more you are willing to be hurt, the less you will be. The more you are unwilling to be hurt the more you will push away love and create more hurt.

Read the different sections on letting go. Letting go is also discussed in CD #2 of the audio course. Thanks for engaging in the work.

Whenever you are faced with a difficult area of life, the most important thing you can do is to restore your peace of mind. This is important because when you are full of fear and upset, you lose your ability to see clearly. You get tunnel vision and destroy your ability to find solutions. Almost anything you do in this state makes your situation worse.

The moment you restore your inner peace, everything changes. The tunnel vision disappears and you see your situation clearly. You can find solutions and this area of life begins to clear up. To restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness, take the following steps:

1. Find the specific circumstances that you are avoiding and resisting. What do you fear will happen? What are you fighting? Be as specific as possible.

2. Let go. Be willing for your fears to come true and for your situation to never change. Be willing in your heart, not your actions. Letting go is strictly an inner state. It restores your ability to see clearly so you can see what action you need to take. Learn more

3. Trust that you will be okay no matter what happens. This makes letting go a lot easier. Trust is something you create. It’s a declaration and a stand. It’s also telling the truth. You have had difficult times before and you have made it through every one of them. If you are in a difficult time now, you will make it through this one too.

4. Release the negative emotion. On the surface, we resist certain circumstances, but at a deeper level, we don’t resist the circumstances, we resist all the feelings and emotion that the circumstances reactivate. To remove this negative emotion, dive into it and feel it willingly like a child. Reach in and pull it out. Learn more

5. Find and heal the nerve that is being triggered. Ultimately, all the fear, upset and tunnel vision comes from the automatic avoidance of some nerve. Finding and healing this nerve is one of the most important things you can ever do. It is the key to having life work. Learn more

6. Look at your situation newly. Once the fear, upset and tunnel vision is gone, you see will your situation in a very different way. Get to this place of peace. Then look to see what needs to be done. As you look, solutions and opportunity will begin to show up.

7. Take action. Go full speed to handle this area of your life.

To resolve the problem areas of your life and to restore your effectiveness quickly, schedule an appointment with Bill Ferguson. Most situations get resolved in just a few sessions.