Choose LOVE over Fear... The Simple Answer to a More Happy Life

in #inspiration6 years ago (edited)

Hello you beautiful Steemian you!


I hope this post finds you well and happy :) If not, just look around!...The sun has risen once again, and there is air effortlessly flowing into and out of our lungs. How amazing is that!?!? There is so much to be grateful for.
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Today I want to talk to you about Love and Fear.

When it comes down to it, in simplest terms, everything in life can be categorized into 1 of 2 things. Life is basically the game of Black versus White (as Alan Watts explains it), or Good verses Bad. Life verses Death. And as I like to think about it, Love versus Fear. Fear is essentially the absence of LOVE. Or we can think of it as Love versus Hate.

In every moment of the day, we can always make the choice, to love or to hate. All of our emotions and feelings and thoughts are either LOVING (and helpful) or HATEFUL (and hindering, FEAR-based thoughts).

Loving thoughts are: Love, Joy, Happiness, Kindness, Patience, Acceptance, Silliness, Friendly, Carefree, Easy-going… Fearful thoughts are: HATE, Anger, Sadness, Impatience, Judgement, Rudeness, Worry, Self-loathing…

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You can make the choice each moment, to be loving, or to be hateful. In every moment, in every second, we can ask ourselves: “Do I love this moment?” or “Do I hate this moment?” Even when things are not going as you would wish, you can still choose to LOVE the moment. You can CHOOSE to love the journey. To love the wild roller coaster of LIFE.

When we choose LOVE, we choose to put ourselves into a higher vibration. We choose to put ourselves into a state that is more giving, more patience, more acceptant, more tolerant, more joyful. All of these feeling-states are states of LOVE.

According to the Law of Attraction, our thoughts are creating our realities. The thoughts we choose to think again and again are putting us into a vibrational frequency to attract these things. To attract things, people, and situations that get us into a feeling state that matches our thoughts. So when we spend more time with LOVING thoughts, more and more things will happen to you to make you feel LOVING. But, the reverse is true. The more time you spend on hateful, hurtful, hindering, limiting thoughts, the more and more situations you will encounter that make you feel just that.

Negative Emotions Are Still Important. Necessary Even…

Now, this is not to say that there is no room for sadness or anger in our lives. No, it is very important for us to feel these emotions too. We cannot ignore our dark parts. We cannot ignore our feelings of sadness and fear when they come up. In fact, without sadness and fear and other hateful emotions, we would not be able to know happiness and excitement and loving emotions.

According to Alan Watts, in “The Game of Black and White”, we need to realize that Black (Fear) is very different to White (Love), but we also need to realize that they are actually the SAME THING.

Whoa….wait, what?

Yes. While Black and White are opposites, they are actually two sides to the same coin. For we can not have Black without White. We cannot know happiness if we don’t know what sadness is. We cannot have Life without Death. We cannot know Love if we do not know and understand Fear. Just as sound waves and lights waves must have both a high-peak (crest) and a low-point (trough) in order to be heard or seen, everything else also comes in twos in order to be understood and experienced.

Because of this concept, that we must have and understand HATE in order to have and understand LOVE, what I am suggesting, is that we send LOVE to those negative feelings too. We need to send love to our sadness. Send love to our fears. Send love to our anxiety. When you allow these emotions to come, and open your heart to them, you will notice that they more easily flow into, and then OUT of you. By loving all of our emotions, we can learn to move THROUGH them, HEALING them, rather than ignoring and suppressing them. Because ignoring and suppressing them is only a temporary fix. You are not actually healing anything in this way. The dark parts will continue to come up, again and again and again, until you decide to move through them. Until you come face to face with them, get to know them, learn to accept them, learn to work with them, learn to LOVE them; only then will you begin to transform those feelings, those triggers. You will begin to move past them.

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Again, I feel it is important to note that not everything we do in our lives will bring us immediate joy. In one of my recent posts, I talk about how we need to step out of our comfort zones in order to grow. We need to do things that push us beyond our current comfort levels. We need to do things that scare us. We need to push our boundaries and try new, exciting, yet scary things. This is how we grow. But we need to learn to LOVE these feelings of fear and anxiety that come up. By sending them love, by sending them acceptance, we can move forward with more confidence, knowing that the possibility of growth, and even more joy and happiness await us on the other side. We can only get comfortable with new things by doing them more and more. We can only master new skills by practicing them again and again. So, as we do more and more things that scare us, as we make more and more leaps of faith and push past our anxiety, the more and more comfortable we will become with those things, and the less they will scare us. The more we do them, the more LOVE they will bring us!

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A Real-Life Example


About 9 months ago, I had written the quote on the mirror “Choose LOVE over FEAR.” I read it each day, and I knew about these principles and ideas, and had every intention of making the right choice to love. However, I was still in the very beginning of my journey of watching and choosing my thoughts. I was still rather new to this concept, and still new to the Law of Attraction, and I was not always able to choose Love. But I was trying…

Flash forward to few months later, and I the Universe presented me with a challenge to test this concept and see first -hand it’s true power.

A little backstory: here in Thailand, you need an International drivers license to drive a motorbike. Every now and then the Police officers will line the roads and have random “checkpoints”, stopping all foreigners and checking their licenses. Anyone who doesn’t have the right license has to pay a fine, either directly to the police station, or sometimes as a bribe, paid directly to the police officer. Every time I saw police on the road I got insane anxiety, so I made sure to get my International license last time I was in the USA. However, since then, they changed the law again, and you need a different kind of stamp on the license. So I have the correct license, but the stamp is in the wrong spot. So, long story short, I’m back to having anxiety at the sight of police officers...

So, my friend and I were driving home from a long, long weekend, and we were so anxious to get home, unpack, shower, and relax. We were about 30 minutes from home, and we turned the corner and saw the police about 300 meters away. My heart sank. Fear rose up from my stomach, into my throat. We pulled over the side of the road to assess the situation. Could we turn around? Could we go a different way? Nope...so we tried to find our international licenses, even though we knew they didn’t have the right stamp. Sometimes they let it slide. But we had been camping all weekend, so we had bags upon bags upon bags… Then, we looked up, and one of the police officers had actually left his post, and driven down to us to talk to us. He knew we trying to get out of it somehow...So he escorted us to the checkpoint and asked to see our licenses.

At this time, both my friend and I had been working with this concept of Love and Fear for a while, but I was so submerged in FEAR that I couldn’t think any loving thoughts. Two officers approached us, one for her, one for me. Luckily I had found my license, but my friend had not. However, the officer who was working with me was not in a good mood. He looked at my license and immediately told me I needed to go into the station to pay the fine of around 1500 baht! (when you pay a bribe to the officer it’s only 200 baht….so this was a HUGE difference). My reaction was not good. I was angry. I was pissed. I was frustrated. I was afraid. And I was acting completely from a place of FEAR. My hateful attitude and reaction to the situation was coming directly from the FEAR inside of me.

At the same time, my friend, without any license at all, had a really sweet officer working with her. I could see the two of them smiling and laughing and I could see her being really nice to him. I felt like I was being treated unfairly, which made me even more angry!....I kept arguing that I had an international license, asking him to understand, to give me a break…

At some point, the officers walk away from us, and I looked to my friend for support, with fear and sadness in my eyes. She only had time to say one thing to me: “I’m just shooting love at them and being really nice. Try being nice…”

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That was all she had time to say before the officer was back, asking me to pay again. I decided to give it a go. To try and see what kindness, patience, and LOVE would do.

I started by apologizing. By smiling. By imagining beams of LOVE shooting out of me into the police officer. And remarkably, he relaxed too. He became a bit less intense and angry too. I told him I was sorry that I didn’t have the right license. I asked if there was a way I could get the right stamp here in Thailand so that I could avoid this issue in the future. I continued to apologize. And I was sincere. He ended up being much more understanding, and when I asked if I could just pay him 200 baht directly, instead of having to go into the station and pay a much larger fine, he agreed. Telling me to make sure I got it fixed for the future.... And just like that, we were off on our way home again.

It wasn’t until I got home, and stepped into my bedroom and saw the quote on my mirror: “Choose LOVE over FEAR” that I had that “ah-ha” moment. That realization that the situation with the police was a perfect example of the powers of love and fear. Fear creates more fear, more anger, more hatred. While love creates more love, more patience, more understanding, and more smiles. This was the Universe, handing me the opportunity to see the power behind this philosophy. The chance to experience HATE and LOVE, side-by-side and see the difference they make.

Needless to say, this was a lesson I learned wholeheartedly. One that I won’t soon forget.

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

I now try to send love out to everyone I come into contact with. I try to live inside a space of love and move from this space in every interaction. I try to send more love out to all the beings of the world. Seeing light and love flowing out of me, creating a path, leading me through the day. Sending love to my friends and family around the globe, and through digital spaces too….To YOU! I have found that I am more happy, more light-hearted, and more loving all-around.

So remember, in every moment, YOU HAVE THE CHOICE, to choose LOVE over fear.

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I love you. Until next time.
🌈 Rachel

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Great post about trying to keep the positive mindset. I absolutely agree about the law of attraction. Like attracts like. You want to surround yourself with people of the same thinking. You put out love and kindness you should get it in return. Some people are just so negative you can't break through, all you can do is show kindness and move on. They will remember it at some point.

When the anxiety, fear and irrational thoughts happen, I guess throwing love at it can work or my thinking is the same just different phrasing. Accept the thought, don't beat yourself up over it and move forward/change your thinking. The idea is not to give the negative any power over you.

I admit I have not read anything by Alan Watts. I personally don't see things as black and white. Life is all sorts of shades of gray. That is from my experiences though. I can understand what you're saying and the reasoning.

As for what you went through, I know my anxiety would have been through the roof. Absolutely to put out love and kindness in that type of moment changes everything. Very nice how things turned out.

Keep up the great postings. I very much enjoyed this one.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment and positive words! I appreciate you!

@rainbowrachel you are very welcome. I love posts that make me think and make look at things from a different point of view. Yours definitely does that. I'm sure you'll see more of me :D

yes yes yes @rainbowrachel! I think many people don't even realise it is a CHOICE! sometimes were so quick to react, that we forget we even have the opportunity to choose love.. which in my experience, just like yours, almost always turns out SO much better for all concerned!.

Oh by the way....

Congratulations @rainbowrachel your post had been selected for an upvote worth ~$2.00 as part of the @ecoTrain minnow support project. Your up-vote has come soon from several people at Smartsteem!

I hope this encourages you to keep writing amazing posts and making this world a better place!.




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Thank you so much Alex! So happy to be part of such an inspiring community, collectively helping to make the world better!

Haha! That was a twisted story with a pretty happy ending. Hope you have the right stamp on your license now. 😉
Being polite is always the right thing to do! Thanks for my today's motivational dosage. Great blog. 👍

LOVE it! Great post @rainbowrachel. I have read many books on the subject. Creative Visualization, LOA and even Quantuum Physics theories related to idea of our thoughts creating our realities. I really like how you tied in a personal experience.

What a wonderful and positive read over my morning coffee. Always choose love, you can never go wrong with love 💚💚💚

I am on the same page. We need to first know what is Love and what is Hate by experiencing them both, but then we can choose between them. And oh boy Love is way better. I see a lot of people who want Love but fear just holds them back. They love the feeling but hate to make the journey. Beautiful post from a beautiful soul. Have a great and loving life. God Bless

Thank you @krisstofer! I really appreciate your kind words and support!

Congratulations @rainbowrachel, your post has been selected by the @asapers for a resteem and a feature in our brand new curation post. Issue 65

What does this mean for you? Well first an upvote from some members of the team, we are no @curie or @ocd but who is going to be unhappy with some extra upvotes. Also each post featured in the article will receive a 10% share of the SBD generated from the curation post.

Keep up the great work and please consider supporting the @asapers with an upvote and/or a resteem on the post you feature in. Please wait seven to ten days for payout.

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P.S. I really believe in the what you put out there comes back, kind of like the prover and the thinker, as in what you think you will find things to prove it, so you better think positive thoughts. :) @insideoutlet

Thank you ASAPers! I am honored to be a part of your curation post. Thank you so much for the support. I'll be sure to upvote and resteem when it comes out!

Love it! I choose to live life with love, with positivity, with optimism. That's not to say I'm living with my head in the sand; I'm of course aware of all the other stuff, I just make a conscious decision not to focus on it ;)

Thanks for an awesome post!


This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.

Thank you so much! I greatly appreciate it!

Very beautiful post
Thanks for the sharing

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