Last week was a tough week for me. A lot of aspects of life all seeking time and attention simultaneously.
It's not that these issues were incredibly unique or unexpected. Just more so the fact that they all came at once.
The diversity of the issues themselves covered the gamut of finance and business to relationships and loneliness.
Upon reflecting on what I was feeling, anxiety stood out as the largest of those issues that continue to plague me in this myriad of topics. Some of you might even be thinking about why Cynthia didn't call me. I am keenly aware and strongly feel the level of stress and anxiety that we're all feeling in society today. I also knew that I could deal with it at this time without having to burden my concern on others to get me through it, not something I have always been able to say as pride and ego would hold me back from admitting any weakness on my part.
You see, anxiety is an element of fear, and fear is such a powerful part of the trio called the F.U.D. factor
The F.U.D. Factor stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. These three insidious friends tend to gang up on any particular issue and hit us, and the problem is that they're always there. They are never gone. For some of us, we describe them as that darkness in our life. For others, it is the general heaviness that we feel upon our shoulders.
This week it made me face issues of my purpose in life, and if I'm on the right path? Asking if what I'm doing is sustainable and can I continue to walk the journey to bring a message of acceptance to all. There was also questions of worthiness to be more than a fetish, worthy of love and a relationship.
You see the F.U.D. Factor knows these are some of my deepest fears. It continues to bring them up and not let me forget them to feel that I have overcome them, which means that I need to continue building my skill sets and my strength and fortitude to answer these questions over and over and over again. Not as a sign of weakness but rather an affirmation to myself that I am worthy and that I am on the right path. That I will be sustained through this journey and delivering the message I am carrying and willingly said YES to many times.
So, let's spend some time talking about this F.U.D. Factor and what I do to address it.
As already mentioned, fear, uncertainty and doubt come from the weakest places within our mind. The question is have we trained our mind to overcome it, like any training it takes effort.
If I wanted to be trite about it, I would tell you that you need three people me, myself and I, but that's not true. What I need are skills, tools, and supports.
Skills
Skills are those particular aspects that we've learned to build some level of competency. After four years of mental health therapy and a lot of ongoing personal development, especially in the excessive downtime of 2020, I have reached the point where I want to continue developing new skills. That’s beyond the 30 years I spent developing skill sets to help develop people that I use on myself as well. Still, I also want to start using the existing skills for the benefit of myself.
Tools
Tools for me are those things that I go to when I know that I need them. They may be in the form of books that mainly guide me or remind me of what I need to know, a pen and paper to Journal, or knowing that I need to capture my gratitude, or it may be just as simple as getting out of bed only to start my day.
Supports
Supports for me are relationships, such as relationships with other people; relationships with spirit; relationships with nature; and relationships with myself. The secret becomes realizing which support you might need in the moment or perhaps the inverse, which helps you have not been using. As an example, during extreme lockdown conditions being able to rely on the spirit of nature is very difficult as you cannot leave your home to be in nature, so finding ways to connect with nature may be challenging but not impossible.
I am coming out of that period this week, so how did I do it?
In the book Lost Connections by author Johan Hari, he talks about the idea that we are very much social entities in need of connections. The connections that he speaks of are not just relationships with other people, although that's extremely important. What he talks about is having, for instance, a connection with a meaningful purpose of work, having a meaningful connection with nature, or a meaningful relationship with a society or group to a common goal.
Saying those things, you can see the connection between the deep-seated fears that I had and how fear, uncertainty and doubt could play with them as what I was calling into the light was my connections to those things.
Reconnecting to our sense of purpose occurs through becoming aligned again. Connecting with friends or acquaintances or even to exist within our local community in a non-threatening way addresses the human element.
My journey this week continues to be through all of these factors and merely challenging myself to get up and get out of bed to make my bed, which is the 1st successful thing that I do every day. I can recognize that I start every day with the successful action of making my bed, leading to the second successful action of even getting ready and out of my pyjamas, leading to the third successful action of walking out my front door. You get the idea it's building upon a series of consecutive successes as small as they lead us to be successful in this thing, we call life. Life is not easy, and to ignore fear, uncertainty, and doubt at your peril of living life with no purpose and lost connections.
Love N Hugs from the U.K.,
Cheers,
Cynthia