Letting Go of Fear

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous, to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.
---Dorothy Thompson

Today's Meditation:

I believe that fear is by far the greatest motivator in life. How many of our actions are based on our fears? How many of our reactions are the result of our fears? Whether we want them to be or not, our fears are just about the strongest determiners of our actions that we have in our lives.

That is, until we let them go and begin to trust life and living and God, whatever we conceive God to be. The problem is that most of us have become comfortable with our fears--because we know them so well, we treat them almost as if they were old friends, never to be let go of, and we keep them with us all the time.

But they aren't our friends, no matter how comfortable they may feel. They hurt us, and they rob us of many opportunities to enjoy our lives. I've had friends like that, too--people who brought me down when I was with them. It took a great deal of effort to leave those friendships, for my own good. I tried to change them into what I thought friendship would be, but that never worked--in the end, I had to make the hard decision of taking care of my own spiritual and emotional well-being, and I stopped seeing certain people. It's only happened twice, but both times it's been an extremely important thing for me to do, something that opened up my growth potential.

I've left fears behind in the same way. I've recognized them as destructive and hurtful, and I've decided that they do not serve me in healthy ways. It's been hard to do, and there are still several fears hanging on tenaciously and ruthlessly, but I'm still working at it. And I'm sure I'll keep working at it until I die--but it's work that definitely is worth all the effort."

From livinglifefully.com daily meditation