The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues virtually unabated, and it may continue for as long as the three months which are required to bring another drilling platform online.

Net worths of many hard-working people have been decimated by declines in the value of securities and real estate.

Further, our government now seems to be securely in the control of big corporate and banking interests. There is spreading fear that the best days of the United States are behind us.

Is this the end . . .? Or could it be the beginning?

In your life, have you waited until absolute crisis to make changes that you knew you needed to make long before? Is human nature often to procrastinate until action moves beyond “optional” to “required”?

How do you feel about these crises? Are you concerned about the end of the world as we know it? Are you entertaining apolcalyptic visions? Do you believe that we will resolve these problems and issues?

How do these kinds of issues affect you on a day-to-day basis? What kinds of changes in your decision-making have occurred that relate to these kinds of issues? Is it the end of the world as we know it – to be followed by a world that is better?

“Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.” Oscar Wilde

Is there any other area of life that has produced as much worry and suffering as love? Must love produce suffering, or is the suffering a product of a combination of love with something else . . . like fear of loss and / or regret?

If so – if suffering is unnecessary with pure love – it’s because love is unconditional and to create suffering because of what one “feels” is love is to create needless suffering.

Have you ever worried over love and turned the experience into suffering? How did you transcend it? What role, if any, did fear play in your experience of suffering? Wilde says “love of some kind” plays a role in all suffering. What other kinds of love besides romantic love, if any, have contributed to your suffering in your life?

The world can be a scary place, and there are endless reasons to be concerned. Yet, meeting those concerns with worry generally produces no worthwhile result. Most often, worry causes needless suffering.

Dorothy Thompson said:

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

Consider that worry is a form of fear. Worry can range in degree from mild to completely debilitating. Fearing the unknown and creating movies in our mind about what can go wrong is a bit like focusing on having an accident while you’re driving: not the smartest, safest or most effective thing to do.

What has been your relationship to worry? Has worry ever truly served you? How do you manage worrisome thoughts when they occur?

The enemy of confidence is anxiety and fear. Notice how worry can begin in a small way, then slowly creep into your consciousness and grow. Worry erodes confidence.

Concerns about not enough money, time, love, imagination, accomplishment . . . all of these can mutate into disquieting feelings which have robbed us of joy.

It’s easier said than done, yet an excellent habit remains to replace the image of worry when it appears with an image of the result you desire. We know that that on which we place our attention expands, thus practicing the shifting of attention from worrisome images to satisfying images always pays quick dividends.

How have you typically handled worrisome and anxious images? Are there any strategies that have worked well for you over time?

No discussion of technology at this time of year would be complete without mention of scary technology. Nuclear weapons are the scariest of all; and Albert Einstein spoke about them as follows:

“My part in producing the atomic bomb consisted in a single act: I signed a letter to President Roosevelt, pressing the need for experiments on a larger scale in order to explore the possibilities for the production of an atomic bomb.”

“I was fully aware of the terrible danger to mankind in case these attempts succeeded. But the likelihood that the Germans were working on the same problem with a chance of succeeding forced me to this step. I could do nothing else although I have always been a convinced pacifist. To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.”

Communication technology can be used to help people – or to incite people to harm others. Disease can be spread intentionally – and perhaps even invented for the purpose of spreading and engaging in genocide. Evidence is growing – and I believe present – that the technology of smokestacks and internal combustion engines (and beef consumption, for there is more damage to the environment from cattle waste than from cars) is warming our planet to the point of no return from destruction.

How do we use technology only for good – or even primarily for good? What technologies scare you the most? What aspects of technology gives you pause?

My great friend and internationally-recognized psychologist and NLP expert, Art Giser, wrote about yesterday’s session and the quote from Dune. I asked him if I could share it with Study Hall participants and he said, “Absolutely!”

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Some thoughts on the quote from an NLP perspective:

I have always liked that quote, and in terms of getting people to think about the power of fear, it’s fantastic. The difficulty is that it gets them to think about the power of fear.

In terms of hypnotic language patterns, it is better to not use language patterns like “I must not” “fear is the mind killer,” etc., because it is asking the unconscious to access fear, and then try to handle it. And it supports the idea that fear is more powerful than the conscious mind. It’s like saying, “Don’t think about falling because you’ll hurt yourself” and then the person has to think about falling and about falling hurting them, and then try to turn it into not falling.

According to NLP principles: in the moment of fear, the quote would be much more effective for most people if they just thought: “I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” (From Dune by Frank Herbert)

That part of the quote has great hypnotic language patterns (including the accessing of the “I” that is not the fear; it is only experiencing the fear). People tend to make what they feel part of their identity (“I am a fearful person”).

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Great feedback! Thank you, Art!!! Fantastic insights and suggestions!! Art has amazing workshops on healing and other topics for those who are interested. I’ve attended and Art has coached me; and he is extraordinary!! Highly recommended!!

What about NOT being intrepid? How has it felt when you have lost your nerve, found your courage sapped, and your resolve weakened?

Among the famous lines from Dune by Frank Herbert is, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

What have you done in the past to change not feeling intrepid into at least a neutral feeling, if not the ability to re-access intrepidness? What works for you to transform fear?

Managing risk is managing probabilities. What are the chances of getting the desired result versus the chances of missing it? Each of us has a difference tolerance for risk and varying degrees of analyzing it.

On one end of the continuum is the risk taker who leaps without looking – either trusting for the best or not really caring. This is characterized by reckless behavior.

On the other end is the risk taker who has suffered from “analysis paralysis” from time to time. This person weighs the advantages and disadvantages – and sometimes, this person never makes a decision for fear of the risk going awry.

As in most things in life, a healthy medium is likely the best policy. Weigh things carefully, and weigh things that matter very carefully. Reality check your decisions and risk analysis with trusted colleagues, friends and advisors. Notice the areas in your life where you might be living close to one end of the continuum or the other, and adjust accordingly to the middle.

Some element of trust is required to surrender to something that may be amazingly good for you, but that you may be afraid of for various reasons – including fear that you may not be up to it. But, most likely, you are up to it or the invitation to surrender would not be in your life.

After yesterday’s Study Hall, longtime great friend, Sir Erik Hill, sent the following poem by Guillaume Apollinaire:

COME TO THE EDGE

Come to the edge, he said.

They said: We are afraid.

Come to the edge, he said.

They came.

He pushed them and they flew.

Being pushed by someone whom you trust can help you surrender. Pushing can feel difficult like the tough love that it is, but it results in flying and in even greater degrees of forward and upward movement.

If someone has pushed you to surrender recently, consider that that person may be lovingly urging you to evolve and grow.

How do you best respond? With silence or with the strength to fly? Will your ego surrender?

Copyright 2009. E. B Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.