Akaisha feeling the wide-openness!
We have a choice; living a life of fear, or one of hope and optimism.
Fear
Dwelling on fears clouds the mind.
It creates anxiety, emotional contraction, judgment of others and it becomes difficult to make a clear decision about anything. Moving forward becomes arduous because there is so much doubt. Fear sees limitation, lack of options, and darkness of mind – it’s called depression.
When we are in the middle of it, fear seems very real. What I’m talking about is not the kind of fear when someone has a knife to your throat, threatens your family, or if a wild bear is chasing you. I’m talking about the fear we manufacture in our minds in response to something.
Optimism
When we consider our abilities, good fortunes, and the possibilities of the future, we are able to see opportunities. It’s the place where we have ideas, dreams, solutions to existing problems, and create new inventions.
Yes, currently we are in the middle of some fear-full stuff that is going on.
But there will be hundreds if not thousands of new businesses born out of this present crisis. Perhaps the next Amazon, eBay or Genentech will be leading us into the future.
This is how society, the human race and free enterprise has propelled us forward through the previous decades and centuries. Even Winston Churchill said “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
The world challenges us
There have always been crises.
The world is an active place that challenges us on every level. Will we succumb to fear and contraction? It is well-known that triggering the stress hormones of fear suppresses our immune systems thereby making us more vulnerable to any pathogen, including viruses.
So why would we want to spend long periods of time there?
Maybe we should take a different tack, utilizing our energies of mind to bust through that darkness.
For myself, I want to be on the side of solutions, options and possibilities. I’m not inclined to set down roots in The Land of Fear, having my world contract more and more… slowly dying… while things turn uninviting and colorless.
I simply must change the direction of my personal focus and hit the reset button. I just have to get into the sunlight where things are clearer, hope-full, and somehow be energized by the future, though I don’t know how that will play out.
In my opinion, the virus we need to “kill” is Fear.
I want to leave you with another useful quote from Churchill. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. It’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Personally, I think it’s clarity of mind that will bring us through this.
Trust yourself. Take a deep breath. You will know if you need to stand up and speak, or if you need to sit down and listen. Or maybe a combination of both.
We’re all in this together.
About the Authors
Billy and Akaisha Kaderli are recognized retirement experts and internationally published authors on topics of finance, medical tourism and world travel. With the wealth of information they share on their award winning website RetireEarlyLifestyle.com, they have been helping people achieve their own retirement dreams since 1991. They wrote the popular books, The Adventurer’s Guide to Early Retirement and Your Retirement Dream IS Possible available on their website bookstore or on Amazon.com.
