Los miedos que impiden la felicidad

The fears that prevent happiness

Fear of death

Overcome the fear of death by valuing life and considering that happiness is a consequence of a happy life. Your happiness can be achieved regardless of the fact that death is inevitable. Try to establish that your happiness can occur in the short span of your life, no matter how long it lasts. Your beliefs about what will happen after death may help you, but they may also cause you to form a false idea that it will be very different from what you live today. Whatever your concept of life after death is, even if you believe in nothing, live as if each day is the first and the last of your life.

The death should be faced as a great relief to consciousness, even if this does not always happen, for it allows us to penetrate into the divine unconscious, in which everything can be explained. Allow yourself to be happy with or without fear of death. Let it come in its own time and with its own message. Fear of death in the consciousness prevents happiness from finding its field of realisation. Do not allow this fear to remain too long in that field, but give it attention when situations demand it. Happiness passes through the awareness of death as a necessity of body and mind. Without it the totality of life would not fit into the perishable body and limited consciousness. Therefore be happy, even knowing that death is inevitable from the moment of birth.

Fear of being condemned

The aggression is a natural instinct that we all possess. Aggression against humans is of primitive origin, stemming from the need to survive and protect oneself, which pre-dates the cave age. Therefore, this fear is rooted in you and living with it requires you to become aware that you are also prepared to face it. Your organism and your mind are also structured to react and live in the face of adverse contingencies of external origin. Punishments, whether against the body or not, are the fruit of a society that is still unequal and of our spiritual inferiority. Their actions must follow their thoughts, ideas and emotions. They will have negative consequences as soon as they disagree with social norms. To change them or not is your choice. Whatever your choice, you must be mature enough to learn to accept any consequences of your decision. It may be better, in order for you to be truly happy, to pursue a way of thinking and acting that will bring you less chance of suffering any punishments.

Remember that your happiness comes at a price, and sometimes that price imposes a certain amount of pain or suffering. Endure them and try to consider them as mere contingencies of life. No conquest comes without sacrifice. The sweat and tears that may come from your quest should value it all the more; but do not limit yourself out of fear of it. Dare. Without adventure and daring you live, but you do not get the taste of life.

Fear of not pleasing the father or mother

This is not always a fear, but it is something that prevents us from doing certain things and when it does not, it inoculates us with guilt. You must learn that your happiness, even if you can count on the help of others, is a personal conquest. Maternal and paternal influences have a great weight in our destiny, but they must be analysed, as well as their limits evaluated. Disliking one's father or mother, when one is aware of the consequences and knows that, at the time, this is the best thing for oneself, can be a sign of personal competence. Even if your attitude or choice displeases your family traditions, and that is your own destiny, take it in a mature way and be able to explain your decision without needing to break with anyone or become bitter. But be careful not to choose your destiny just as a way of contradicting or rebelling against parental values. You will end up living your life according to what you want to avoid.

There is no problem in following family orientations when they coincide with your own, just as there is no problem in following those orientations even if they are contrary to your own. They may be the best for you. In that case you need to be flexible with your own destiny. Your happiness can be shared with your family members as well as you can give it to them. Remember that you had or have the family you deserve and in which you need to learn something. Be happy with or without it, but never forget that you should at least be grateful that you have that family. It was they who brought you into the world and who made you go in search of your happiness.

Fear of being assaulted

The physical aggression, of which we are afraid also because of urban violence, can be avoided the less we risk it. However, no one can turn away from the world and avoid living in it. No matter how much we project ourselves, we will be at the mercy of violence as long as society was unequal and spiritually poor. We must realise that a physical aggression that, for example, an assailant may provoke in us, is always a response from Life to us, asking for learning. Nothing happens to us that is not for our good and for us to learn something.

The possibility of aggression must be faced as an event that is feasible and that will bring us some benefit. Let us not fear what, because of us, has become inevitable. On the other hand, to be attacked is to see ourselves as vulnerable to the world. We often indulge in aggression because we consider our honour a title granted by society. No one loses what belongs to them. We only lose what is not ours or what we need to learn to use. To be happy, without fear of suffering any kind of aggression, be it physical or moral, requires awareness of your own divine destiny. Always remember that we were generated by God for happiness and not for destruction.

Fear of being alone

Happiness is a solitary good, as it is relative to each individual. It is a personal pattern of being. Even if we are next to someone, our happiness can only be partially shared, because the deep feeling we have will only be felt by us and by God. Being alone is a necessary situation at some point in our lives. If life has imposed this contingency on us, we must face it as an important event so that we learn something from loneliness. To be happy without a physical companion, be it a partner or a family member, can be a message from Life that we are collectively useful.

If you are a solitary person and want to be happy even in solitude, try to do something for the community. Making happiness conditional on having the company of someone with whom we can live a loving relationship is a fanciful ideal that we inject from social rules and that often prevents us from really valuing the bonds that life offers. Do something that gives you satisfaction and at the same time social benefits.

Perhaps the reason for your loneliness is exactly the fact that you do too little for the society in which you live. Do something for your own happiness by doing anything for someone else's happiness. Start for the collective good, preferably anonymously. From the bonds that life offers. Experiment with cultivating some kind of activity in which you can include friends who share your solidarity. You may discover that selfishness is one of those responsible for our external loneliness.

Fear of losing something

We lose what we selfishly withhold. We need to learn to manage possessions without allowing them to possess us. The fear of losing things comes from the difficulty in perceiving oneself independently of external objects. This fear also stems from the attachment to things and the value attached to them. Even if they have been acquired at great sacrifice, we need to learn to understand that life only takes things away from us with the intention that we learn to value them properly. Their removal from our lives represents an ongoing karma, to which we must position ourselves with balance, calm and reflection in order to make the best of the experience of loss so that it need not be repeated.

We have to ask ourselves what Life wants to teach us and why it used that way. It is appropriate to think that one should not be negligent in the custody of one's possessions, nor should one be unconcerned about losing them, without being directly responsible for them. Value should be attributed to the fact of loss as an educational mechanism. Happiness comes from valuing the goods one possesses and being aware of the relativity of that possession. To be happy is to be able to have things, but to know how to live with the minimum of them. Whether you have them or not, strive for happiness. Show yourself as someone who, independent of working to have things, whether you manage to have them or not, proceeds without any commodity, feeling at peace and happy with what you have already conquered in life.

Fear of losing someone

When our life horizons are spiritual, difficulties and conflicts become less. Loved ones, in whom we place our feelings, are sure supports in life, contributing to a happier life. Death, separation, a change of address, or whatever the reason that separates us from such people, each of these events must be faced as an invitation to transform our own life. No one loses anyone, for we are all on the same evolutionary planet. We do not leave it so easily without adding higher values to the spirit. The people we love and from whom we separate may need some time away from our living together, so that they can also learn with new people.

It is a time for each of us to breathe new airs. Let the nostalgia come into your heart and embrace it in harmony, but let the loved one continue its evolution, hoping for a possible reunion at a later date. Don't get up about a separation. Believe that without the presence of that person, you also have the right to be happy. Do not think that the world has come to an end and that it is impossible to live differently. Your walk is a personal journey with or without that person. Do not consider yourself defeated, for Life will always offer you a new opportunity. Your happiness is your great goal. Each day of this separation is an invitation to your individuality, so that you may perceive yourself closer to God.

Be happy and wish happiness to the one who was absent from your side.

Fear of being discovered

Generally, those who believe they have done or are doing something wrong think about the possibility of being discovered, as this psychically triggers the guilt-generating mechanism that makes it possible for the belief that they are being watched to emerge. The so-called ‘persecutory or persecution delusion’ will tend to psychologically inhibit the individual. He will limit himself and will be convinced that people, mainly those people who do not want them to know about his wrong attitudes, are judging his actions. It is difficult for someone who suffers from the feeling of being watched and judged for a certain attitude to be integrally happy on the sly. Fear of scandal or of exposure of privacy leads the individual to become limited and unable to feel effectively free, for he will begin to believe that he is unworthy.

The limit of their happiness is self-imposed. We all have something to be ashamed of by virtue of social norms and customs that force us to live people, appropriate ways of relating to the world, which prevent our shadow from appearing. Next to the people we need to adapt socially, we carry a shadow that contains negative or rejected aspects of ourselves. In order to live well in society we only reveal our apparent normality, and it is inevitable that we do so, because we hide those contradictory aspects that can generate conflicts. To be happy, without fear of being discovered, means to say that you assume what you hide, because the consequences of what you do will be fully accepted, whatever they may be. Be happy regardless of what you have to hide.

Fear of being inferior

The desire to have some importance in life and to show oneself to be better than one is is part of human nature and represents an attempt to overcome the fact that one is a creature and not a Creator. That fear is part and parcel of the struggle for survival when it is believed that values can be acquired through someone's inferiority. It is because of that fear that pride assumes command of certain ideas and acts in people's lives. It blinds us to the extent that it induces us to a way of thinking, as if we are better than others. Remember that you are no better or worse than any other human being. You are only different from every other human being, having qualities, just like the other, which are present in greater or lesser intensity than in him. That fear is also the result of insecurity about what you are and the desire to surpass yourself in order to achieve an idealised image of yourself. To be happy is to be aware of one's own uniqueness, perceiving oneself as different and unique in one's essential nature. Nothing, and no one, is superior by virtue of the references with which comparisons are generally made.

When the reference is God, nothing supports superiority or inferiority. Become aware of your relative value and consider your equality with others, for we are all in the pursuit of happiness. Some are more advanced than others, but not superior on a scale that should make us inferior. To be happy without appearing inferior is to accept the external differences that life imposes on us and to consider that happiness belongs to everyone, regardless of ethnicity, creed, socio-economic status or nationality. We are children of God and we deserve happiness. We should not try to overcome an inner feeling of superiority or inferiority by humiliating someone, even in thought. Nor should we feel humiliated when another's pride speaks louder. Happiness comprises understanding the other's desire, remaining at peace and seeking the self, the divine essence.

Fear of not meeting expectations

We all want to feel important to someone. Many still live according to their public image. We want to meet the expectations of a person, a family, a reference group, or the culture in which we live. On the one hand, this can propel them towards a promising future, but on the other hand, it can alienate us for life, because we run the risk of living the life expected by others. To be happy, you need to separate your expectations from those that come from outside. When these are generated by others, they can be reciprocated and coincide with the individual's life project, which can be an incentive; however, when they go beyond our capacity or differ from the life project we would like to adopt, they lead to frustrations in the future.

When we decide to stop worrying about external expectations, mainly those of those who helped us to consolidate our personality and contributed to get us to where we are, we will surely have reached maturity and security. Displeasing someone we love is not an easy task. It requires firmness in one's principles and love in declaring them. Personal happiness can force us to affirm our own destiny, even if it is contrary to the one we are used to following.

Fear of directing one's own life

No one should abdicate from steering his or her own destiny. Even knowing that it is chained to that of other people, we must be aware that in life we have to learn to make our own choices. Each choice will provide consequences that may bring us suffering or happiness. We must remember that every victory depends on sacrifice. So it is with happiness; it demands not only sacrifice but also a good deal of renunciation. Throughout life we must make choices and we cannot fear their consequences, for if we do, we will hardly make them. Not to choose is not to live. Being in life, it is inevitable to make choices. The longer we delay taking command of our life, the more we delay our happiness.

Don't be afraid to decide, or wary that things won't work out. It is better to err than to skip and remain alienated. Seeking help in making choices can be important. Even if this allows us to make fewer mistakes, not everything can be left to us to decide alone. There are things that depend only on us, and it is precisely by deciding alone that we will learn. Regret what you have done when it has caused unhappiness to yourself or to someone else, but regret it even more when your fear of making choices did not allow you to have done what was right for your happiness. Be happy by taking real command of your life.

Fear of the unknown

No one has total control over Life. No human being is certain of anything, nor is he or she certain of what his or her own future will be like. Although the future of mankind is an unknown, the future of mankind is to be happy, of that there can be no doubt. God's plans certainly include human happiness, but the strategies He uses cannot always be foreseen. In case you are afraid of the unknown, you should know that most people are afraid of the unknown too, but they may already have it under control. They have discovered that it is useless to anticipate with hypotheses what you are not sure how it will be. They are also aware that we do not have the capacity to know everything, especially what depends on infinite variables. Such anticipation must occur within what is attainable, but when it comes to wanting improbable or impossible things, unhealthy anxiety can be incurred.

It is no use thinking that the unknown is threatening or that it will necessarily come against us. It is necessary to have confidence in God and in one's own ability to overcome obstacles. Life does not give us anything that we cannot use to our advantage. Pretending to anticipate the future as if it were threatening can make us live in constant turmoil, thinking that Life will always offer us the negative. In case the future brings you something bad or negative, be sure that it will be the driving force of your growth and will enable you to be a better person than you are. Your happiness will happen, but it will be postponed as long as you continue to fear what you cannot control.

Fear of spirits

This is an ancient fear of most people, for it leads human beings into the realm of the "supernatural", into the dark realm of the imagination brought into the shadowy. The domain of the spirits is the night, the dark, the magical and the phantasmagorical. Culture and superstition led humans to make such associations. We need to demystify this idea by placing reason and maturity in our consciousness. Such associations belong to the infantile phase of the human being and of humanity itself. Spirits must be understood as persons, and being so, they do not have unlimited power over Life. We attribute to them a power which in fact they do not possess. In any belief system they are regarded almost as divinities and this generates the fear that is held. To fear them is to attribute to them power over your consciousness.

Strive for a relationship with them like the one you have with other people, that is, one of respect and limits. No spirit can harm your happiness if you do not give it power. On the other side of life there are the spirits, who like us, in addition to other aspects, hate, work, suffer, love and seek to be happy. In case you do not believe in their existence, it is a contradiction in terms to be afraid of what you do not believe in. Now, if you do believe in their existence, seek to understand their nature, habits and limits. In any case, do not fear them, for there is only a vibrational barrier between you and them, not an emotional one. Like them, continue to seek their happiness, regardless of the type of relationship you have with them. Consider that there are other parallel life forms erected by the same loving laws of God.

Fear of the dead

This is another name given to spirits. Dead are those who are without a body of flesh, but, they are not lifeless. They are alive and live much longer than some who consider themselves alive in the physical body. The word death has the power to bring us into contact with emotions that suggest destruction, fear, terror, weeping, mourning, loss, among other negatively charged emotions. When we call our deceased relatives dead, we are contaminating our emotional world with these negative concepts. Call them spirits or refer to them as relatives who have returned to true life. Even if their death was somehow peaceful, we will not stop making the associations.

The fear of the dead is the same fear we have of spirits because we make those same associations. Psychologically we should associate the memory of them with the personality they had, bringing to consciousness the happy times we had with them, or, if they did not occur, that we could have had. Don't worry about the possible sanction they may have made to your behaviour, for their time has passed. Now it is your time and your judge is God. Not the God forged by religions, but the One who lives in your heart. Be happy with or without the memory of the dead. You deserve to be happy, whether they, when they were here, were happy or not.

Fear of exposure

This is the fear of the timid and withdrawn. They are actually afraid to fail and do not want to appear as a failure. They are not confident and mature enough to put up with that. We don't necessarily have to expose ourselves in public or be on stage in front of people. We are not obliged to have public speaking or theatrical skills to do what we want to do. But it is important that we are prepared for the doubts that exposure brings or is part of some process that makes us grow. When that fear is an obstacle to our happiness, we have to face it with small doses of exposure in order to acquire the wisdom to be in front of people without the fear of making mistakes.

Mistakes are part of learning and are one of the experiences that will help us make up our minds. The path to happiness contains not only successful experiences, but also those from which we learn important lessons. Opening up means being transparent and freeing ourselves from the need to receive praise or recognition for what we do. If we have the courage to expose ourselves when the moment calls for it, we must learn that others, like ourselves, react differently when they are in the public eye, let's set aside their comments depending on the situation. Overcome the fear of exposure by remembering that your judge is God and your mistakes are part of your initiation into life and happiness.

Fear of serious illness

A serious illness is a possible early interruption in someone's life. It is an invitation to reflection for the sick person and those around them. It is a possible death announced for all to reflect on. The fear of contracting a serious illness, in oneself or in someone dear to one's heart, arises from a lack of awareness of the subtle mechanisms of Life, which sends us what we need to learn to live. An illness is always a message from Life telling us that something in our inner world is out of balance. Illness is like an older sister warning us of the dangers of existence. The fear of illness prevents us from reaching our ideals, for we begin to suffer in anticipation.

The strong identity we establish with the body goes a long way towards justifying this fear. Approaching life in the body as a phase in which we learn to deal with matter is fundamental to our happiness. Fear of cancer, AIDS or any other serious illness is natural, but it should not lead us to inertia or impede our happiness. We need to be aware of a greater reality than the life of the body, which is merely an auxiliary mechanism in our evolution. Life is much broader than existence in a perishable and fragile body. Our happiness lies in the awareness of this fragility, respecting its limits and its capacities. The body is the instrument for the conquest of happiness, but its health is not the guarantee to acquire it. More important than perfect health is peace of conscience. Without the latter, happiness is not possible.

Fear of rejection

We all know this kind of fear, especially those who have been restricted in some way in their lives. No one can be excluded or forgotten. The feeling of rejection makes us fall into depression and reduces our chances of becoming happy. To avoid rejection, we often allow vanity and pride to take over our lives. Awareness of personal worth and the conviction of our own limitations are an excellent antidote to prevent these feelings from taking possession of us. Happiness is possible when we adopt the idea of our own importance in the eyes of life, without necessarily being important to a particular group of people.

The meaning we want to have for someone or a group is a personal achievement and depends on the values we have and which are adopted by that person. Happiness is an important achievement whether we are in a group or not, but it is achieved when we are in relationship with it. Be happy and show yourself as you really are. You will learn from the environment you live in and be able to become a better person and reflect on rejection. By cultivating a more realistic self-image of yourself, by considering your possibilities and limitations, by rethinking the phantom of rejection, you will feel better about yourself. Learn to appreciate yourself and be happy with who you are.