I’ve suggested that the alternative to a fear and doubt-based culture is that each of us as individuals turn away from media (and other agents of fear-mongering) and turn inward to a deeper understanding of who we are as unique individuals. Again, this solution is a simple concept, but acting on it is not necessarily easy to do. So, where do we begin?
By developing a skill of self-reflection that is completely foreign to most of us. We have been trained to look outward, first to our parents, then to our families, churches, schools, bosses, government leaders, etc., etc. When the picture we see outside ourselves is bright, we can feel peaceful and hopeful, but when the picture is dark, we feel fear because we instinctively believe that we can never change those threatening people and things that are outside of us. We become numb or we become hopeless, and then we are truly at the mercy of anyone who wants to use our fear against us. The fear cycle grows in power.
What we can change, is inside of us. There is a great deal involved, but the first step is very clear. Begin with the simple exercise of noticing who has the microphone in our head, our internal voices of fear and doubt (Inner Critters) or our internal sense of possibility which in BoldMoves Country, we call the Whisperer because in most of us, this voice has atrophed so much from lack of attention that we can only hear it as a whisper if we hear it at all.
Give it a try. Just for today, listen to the messages you give yourself. Do you judge you? Do you shame you? If you do, you are in league with your Inner Critters. You are allowing internal fear-mongering. Notice, and you have the first powerful step to looking inward where what you see really matters. More tomorrow!
