{"id":76,"date":"2018-04-17T01:04:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T01:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/?p=76"},"modified":"2018-04-17T01:04:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T01:04:18","slug":"life-without-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/2018\/04\/life-without-fear.html","title":{"rendered":"What Would Your Life Be Without Fear?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-75\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/408\/2018\/04\/fantasy-3281907_1920-300x170.jpg\" alt=\"By Kellepics\" width=\"300\" height=\"170\" \/>Imagine you are relaxing with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and suddenly Jesus appears in front of you. If Jesus is not your go to guy, then Abraham or Buddha.\u00a0 Someone you believe is a bridge to something bigger than yourself.\u00a0 For Millie, she imagines the Goddess Isis when she needs support. Whoever this figure is, pretend he\/she\/it appears in front of you in all their glory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine feeling completely loved as if you were enveloped in the ultimate warm and soothing blanket because that would be the feeling if this figure was in front of you. Once you adjust to their presence, you hear a voice that says:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have come to offer you a great gift. If you agree, I will take away all of your fear. There will be no obstacles to peace of mind but you will no longer recognize your life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Do you want the superpower of fearlessness?\u00a0 Not recklessness, but a life not controlled by fear. \u00a0Think about it. What would your life be like if you were not anxious about how others saw you, abandonment or survival?\u00a0 You would still care for people and be kind but would not behave or make decisions based on fear vs. what you want.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You may be strong and adventurous already. Perhaps you are a success in your chosen field and are the sort of person that gets things done but these qualities are not the same as fearlessness. No matter how prosperous or popular you are, everyone is afraid of something even if it is just losing all the wonderful stuff you have.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Jon Paul* is a successful doctor. When asked if he would accept the gift of a life without fear, he declined. \u2018As much as I wish I could,\u2019 he explained, \u2018fear has been a factor in so many of my decisions that I am afraid of what my life might be.\u2019 The idea that there could be a life without fear intrigued him but in the ultimate irony, a life without fear scared him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The world contains no fear that you have laid not upon it. And none you cannot ask love\u2019s messengers to remove from it.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 A Course in Miracles<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What would you do if you were not afraid? \u00a0Is anxiety protecting you from danger or a convenient excuse to avoid a fuller life? \u00a0Jon Paul has decided to start looking at how fear may be holding him back. He is not ready to throw caution to the wind but perhaps ask if he needs quite so much.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*Not his real name.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine you are relaxing with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and suddenly Jesus appears in front of you. If Jesus is not your go to guy, then Abraham or Buddha.\u00a0 Someone you believe is a bridge to something bigger than yourself.\u00a0 For Millie, she imagines the Goddess Isis when she needs&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Would Your Life Be Without Fear? - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you were fearless but not reckless, how would your life be different?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Would Your Life Be Without Fear? - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you were fearless but not reckless, how would your life be different?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/2018\/04\/life-without-fear.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Serenity in an Age of Anxiety\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-17T01:04:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/files\/2018\/04\/fantasy-3281907_1920-300x170.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kelly Dorfman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Would Your Life Be Without Fear? - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety","description":"If you were fearless but not reckless, how would your life be different?","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Would Your Life Be Without Fear? 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In addition to her work as a clinical nutritionist, she leads workshops on resolving relationship conflicts and anxiety using principles of wholeheartedness. Kelly also directed an intuition training program for doctors and medical professionals for ten years and co-founded a non-profit to support families of children with developmental delays. After decades of clinical practice using targeted nutrition therapy to tackle complex medical problems, she wanted to focus on problems created by the mind beyond biochemistry. She noticed the mind seems to create endless obstacles to happiness and peace of mind no matter how committed a person is to these goals. Anger, fear, anxiety and loneliness are symptoms the mind needs help as well as opportunities to remember who we really are and why we are here. Kelly is writing a second book tentatively titled, Love in an Age of Anxiety.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/author\/kdorfman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}