I am back! It has felt like many lifetimes have been contained in the last few weeks. It has been such a golden time of my life. The wedding ceremony was holy and beautiful. I felt entirely present, calm and deep in love.

I digress….This post is not supposed to be about our wedding – this post is about the ability we have to make life open up, or contract upon itself. This post is about fear.

Sometimes in life we do things because we are driven by the fear of what will happen if we don’t do them. Or the fear of judgement, the fear of falling behind, the fear of failing, the list goes on and on.

But we can do these very same things with another motivating force. We can do things in life with a VISION of our aspiration. A higher vision that gives us a deeper reason for the things we do.

I came to the understanding that there are quite a few things I do in my life that were motivated by fear even the things I wanted to do. For example – I (along with many in my class) are eye deep in the convoluted application processes for medical electives at a number of hospitals in North America. It is stressful and I am motivated by fear – I do everything I need to do out of fear. The fear of deadlines, the fear of falling behind, the fear of not getting accepted, the fear of not making the right career decisions. This fear propels me to do the things I need to do to apply. But it makes the journey so unenjoyable! It puts me in a position where I only want to do things in order to extinguish my fears and worries. This is a very limited way of thinking.

Instead of fear, if I was instead motivated by my VISION, then things would look quite different. My vision involves me practicing medicine and helping people as much as I can. My vision is to gain experience and knowledge in a hospital. My vision is to some day end up back in North America, near my family.

This vision is empowering. And when I contemplate the vision, and not my fears – it truly expands my focus and reminds me why I need to do the things I am doing. Why I am studying medicine. Why I am on a wild goose chase through these application processes.

It allows you to find peace along the way. The list of things to be fearful of is bottomless, and even once you get to your destination, you will find other things that scare you there too. What’s the point? Life is the journey. The key is to find peace along the way. The key is to face all joys and adversity with peace. And peace must be cultivated. It doesn’t come as a reward of years of living in fear. There is no reward for that.

The vision creates inner strength and moves you forward. It allows you to make sensible but empowering decisions about your life and who you are in this world.

The vision expands you.  I believe that having a higher vision keeps you open to different opportunities and possibilities. When we act out of fear we often believe that things have to be a certain way and it is difficult to see other options. Fear constricts.

But life doesn’t work that way. Life flows and changes in beautiful ways that you never would thing possible. It is important to always stay open to the magic of life. When we are motivated by a force that moves us to the highest good, the highest vision we have for ourselves, we open doors to different roads that can take us there, or somewhere better.

Being motivated by fear constricts you. It limits you. It does not allow you to have a full experience of what life has to offer you because fear makes you do what is absolutely necessary and stay away from the rest. It lets you survive, but it doesn’t let you thrive. We are not here on earth to just survive our way through. We are here to explore and expand and experience all that life is.

 —-

So in all things in life, ask yourself what is the bigger picture here? What is the vision? Your vision can bring you out of even the deepest and darkest pits of life. If you find yourself doing things out of fear, then reset your motivations. There is always a higher vision for us. We just need to look for it.