According to the book, A Course in Miracles, there are only two emotions, love and fear. If you are experiencing love, you are not in fear. If you are experiencing fear, you are not expressing love. Look at your life. How much of your time is spent in love? More than likely, you are not experiencing love a lot of the time. Thus, if you believe the ideas expressed in A Course in Miracles, you are experiencing fear a great deal of the time.

How does fear affect you? Do you have fear of public speaking? What about asking for a raise? Do authority figures cause you anxiety? Does meeting new people bring about a lot of anxiety? Do you fear going back to school, or leaving your current job for one that might be more fulfilling? Are you fearful of trying new things? Do you fear being assertive? What about doing things that your family might not go along with? Do you have fear that people won’t approve of you? As you can see, fear shows up in many different ways. A good question to ask yourself is, “What would I do differently if I had no fear?” If there are a number of things on your list, then fear is interfering with your happiness.

The question is, where is the fear really coming from? Is it coming from outside of you or is it something you are doing to yourself? Say, for example, you had a fear of speaking in front of people. Perhaps you are afraid they will not approve of you. If you truly believed you were adequate and loveable and good enough, you would not need others’ approval. The problem is that you don’t feel this way.

Did you know that research has shown that about 95% of what is going on within us is at the subconscious level? That means you are only conscious of 5% of what is occurring inside of you. In other words, if you are experiencing fear, it is very likely you are not aware of the real cause.

All of us have received lots of messages when we were growing up. Some from parents, siblings, teachers, schoolmates, friends, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of these messages were not very positive. If you received messages such as, “You are not smart enough or not as smart as your sibling; you’ll never amount to anything; you’re lazy; you can’t do anything right; or, you’re just not good enough,” etc., this is going to have a huge impact on how you feel about yourself. And if you don’t feel good about yourself, you’re not going to want to leave your “comfort zone” and you’ll experience a great deal of fear when you are required to take risks. More than likely, you will avoid taking risks whenever possible. Why would you want to attempt something new if you believed you were inadequate or likely to fail?

The problem is not only that you accept these untrue and negative messages, but worse, you are not even aware of them or how they are affecting you, since many of them are buried in your subconscious. There is good news, however. You do not have to let these negative beliefs continue to interfere with your success and happiness. There are many ways to become aware of these subconscious beliefs and to eliminate them.

One excellent method is with the use of hypnosis. Since hypnosis deals with the subconscious mind (the 95% of you that you are not aware of), it is an excellent way to find out what negative core beliefs are affecting you and where they came from. Once you see where these beliefs originated, you can then see things from a more mature point of view. You are then able to challenge these old messages, and change or reframe them into much more positive and healthier beliefs.

Every one of us has the potential to be a “peak performer” or what Abraham Maslow calls a “self-actualizer.” But to achieve this you must rid yourself of the negative core beliefs which are causing so much unhappiness. Until we let go of the negative beliefs from the past, we cannot truly enjoy the present.

by Phil Rosenbaum For Body Mind Spirit Guide