In 2002, in the middle of some very dark times for me, my friend Sam gave me a copy of a book called Love Is Letting Go Of Fear by Dr. Gerald D. Jampolsky. It was a short, large format book with lots of pictures, so the chances of me actually reading it were pretty high. Alas, as used to happen to me regularly, I simply ignored the gift (although I thanked him and tried my best to make him believe that I’d read it) and put it on my bookshelf for a few years, until one day in 2004 when I was completely beside myself with crippling anxiety (I didn’t know what to call it back then), I picked it up and read it cover to cover in one sitting.

It changed my life.

I don’t say things like this lightly…this book ACTUALLY changed my life. So much so that I actually went out and got a tattoo on the inside my right ankle of the word LOVE. I now read this book AT LEAST once annually and it remains the one book that I give away more than any other.

Here’s a quick summary of the book:
“Renowned all over the world as the founder of Attitudinal Healing, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky reminds us that the impediments to the life we long for are nothing more than the limitations imposed on us by our own minds. Revealing our true selves, the essence of which is love, is ultimately a matter of releasing those limited–and limiting–thoughts and setting our minds free.”

In the book, Jerry, as I like to call him, shares that in 1975 the outside world saw him as a successful psychiatrist who appeared to have it all. However, the reality was that his inner life was chaotic, empty, and unhappy. He was afraid.

• Afraid that he wasn’t good enough.
• Afraid that he was headed down the wrong path.
• Afraid that people would regard him as a fraud.

That’s when he came across “A Course in Miracles.” By applying the concepts of The Course to both his professional and personal life he began to experience periods of peace that he had never dreamed possible. In his book Jerry gives us 12 lessons for creating inner peace. I’ll list the lessons here, but you’ll have to read the book for all of the descriptions:

Lesson 1: All That I Give is Given to Myself
Lesson 2: Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness
Lesson 3: I Am Never Upset for the Reason I Think
Lesson 4: I Am Determined to See Things Differently
Lesson 5: I Can Escape the World I See by Giving Up Attack Thoughts
Lesson 6: I Am Not the Victim of the World I See
Lesson 7: Today I Will Judge Nothing That Occurs
Lesson 8: This Instant Is the Only Time There Is
Lesson 9: The Past Is Over It Can Touch Me Not
Lesson 10: I Could See Peace Instead of This
Lesson 11: I Can Elect to Change All Thoughts that Hurt
Lesson 12: I Am Responsible for What I See

The gist of the book is this: There are only two emotions; one is Love and the other is Fear. Love is our true reality. Fear is something our mind has made up, and is therefore unreal.

The mind is funny like that. It can take things that we KNOW aren’t real and turn them into debilitating monsters under our proverbial beds that we BELIEVE could literally jump out at any time and eat us whole in one bite. Our minds are programmed to react more strongly to negative information than positive information. This makes sense from a primitive psychology perspective: Negative information is likely more dangerous to us when in a survival situation. We will be more affected by the thug-looking character in a dark alley than by the sweet little girl walking in the park with her Dad. We BELIEVE one of those characters is more likely to cause us harm.

As self preservation is one of our basic instincts, along with sex and relationships, that bias towards focusing on the negative becomes even more pronounced during times of uncertainty. When we don’t know where to turn, anything that seems potentially dangerous grabs our attention and activates our primitive survival instincts. This happened to me in a big way several years ago (I outlined this in Issue #7), but the highlights of the story are: 1) I had a series of panic and anxiety attacks, 2) I systematically shut down many parts of my life, and business, and 3) I became a fearful, scared shadow of the person that I had been before.

• Over time, with lots of therapy with Eddie and many re-reads of Jerry’s book, I began to recover my grip on FAITH. Not necessarily faith in a religious sense, although my relationship with God improved as a result of these efforts, but FAITH as a complete confidence that
• EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY. I did this using the following three steps. If you find yourself in a fearful place, one with high levels of anxiety, guilt, or even panic, consider this process:

Recognize: If you can recognize that you are in a state of fear, guilt, or panic, you are well on your way toward changing your state. If you are not sure if you are in a state of fear, ask yourself this question: “Can I choose to stop these unpleasant, spiraling thoughts if I want to?” If the answer to the question is, “Yes,” then go ahead and do it. Stop those thoughts by telling yourself that these thoughts are just thoughts. You have the power to stop them if you’d like. If the answer is “No,” (which is more likely even if you’ve tried to stop them), then you have just realized that you are fearful. Don’t TRY to change it right now. Just accept the fear and know that it will pass. Don’t focus on it. Ignore it in some sense like a crying child in church…eventually it WILL go away.

Refocus: Now that you’ve identified the fear, and hopefully chosen to just accept the fact that it’s there, focus your energy on your five senses. Ask yourself: “What am I smelling?” “What am I seeing?” “What am I hearing?” “What are the tastes in my mouth?” and “How is my body feeling?” If you intentionally bring your focus away from the doomsday scenarios of that you are cooking up and unto your present circumstances, you will break the chain of runaway thinking. This is because you can’t focus on fear and feeling simultaneously. Even if you only get a brief respite, any break, no matter how small, is enough to change the direction of your anxiety and help you take an active approach to problem solving.

Re-imagine: Take your doomsday scenario and re-write it so that you are not stuck with the same old script. Write a Hollywood ending if you like. If you are scared that you will lose all of your money in the stock market, imagine the opposite. Picture the market changing direction, and that you will have more than you will ever need. If you have been out of work and are afraid that you will never get another job, imagine that you will be inundated with job offers. I’m not saying that by simply imagining these things that they will happen, only that by doing so you can stop the spiral of fear and start thinking and planning for your next steps. That shift can make all of the difference between fueling the contagion of panic and returning to a more balanced state where you can actually effect real change in your life.

Dr. Jampolsky states in his book that fear is a combination of guilt about the past and anxiety about the future. By focusing on the present moment, the things that are happening right now, instead of everything else, we begin to BELIEVE that we can take the next steps…because we ALREADY ARE taking the next steps. Our imagination is our greatest cognitive gift. The ability to imagine a different and better future is the first step toward creating one. This is the essence of moving from fear to faith. This is the simple miracle.