Hungry for More

My dog Coco recently taught me a valuable life lesson.  No matter how much she has just eaten, whenever I take her out for her walks, she always scavengers for more food or bones.  In a nutshell, she is always hungry for more, no matter how full she may be...

It made me think of how I am after a huge meal at a restaurant or after Christmas lunch - so satisfied that I swear I will never eat again! A huge exaggeration of course, but the same applies to my attitude after attending a Christian conference. I become so 'full of the spirit', that I ignorantly believe I will be able to maintain that satisfied, fullness indefinitely, but the truth is that I never do. Slowly but surely, I soon become complacent and return to my usual mediocre life. 

I believe that if we lived a life of always being hungry for more, we will be able to sustain our fullness of satisfaction and never be left feeling empty or unsatisfied.  I am certainly not advocating a life of gluttony with food, but in terms our our spirituality, we should be constantly eager for all kinds of spiritual crumbs that we can find, scavenging for morsels of treasures, like my Coco, to keep up forever full and never lacking!

How to manage your Fears

Being an avid note taker, I thought I'd share what I recently learnt at my last Writer's Group I attend... Although the talk was aimed at writer's fears, I do believe they are helpful in coping with all life's many fears...

I also don't think it was a coincidence that the symbolism of fear used in the talk was in driving, as for those who know me, this has always been my personal monster, but having used the skills shared in driving home from the talk, I can testify that they do really work!

How to manage your Fears 

Inspired by the Blog ‘Frab to Fab’ by Susan Dennard and presented by author, Rae Rivers

Fear is the umbrella word for all emotions that hold you back from your dreams and causes you discomfort in pursuing them. From a writer’s perspective, it is what causes your writer’s block and hampers your creativity and flow. You may think your many excuses causing the delays are valid, but the underlying cause is always some form of subtle and symptomatic fear.

How we combat these fears is to realise that fear is not our enemy. God gave us this emotion to protect us and keep us safe. We should never invalidate our fears, dismiss them or try to hide them from ourselves and others. We must acknowledge and accept them. We need to make friends with our fears so that we can interact and reason with them. You can even give your fear a name to personalise it in making it your friend!

How we silence our fears is to reassure them. Think of your fear as a car crash. We may be scared to crash, but we still need to drive! To feel safe, we need to put on our seat belts, which will soften the blow of a crash (failure). Symbolically, our seat belt is our protective measures that we can put in place. For an extra measure, we can reassure ourselves with an airbag, which would be our back-up plan if our seat belt fails.

Always consider the worst case scenario, ie our worst fear, and then fix it with a plaster of steps to put in place to avoid it or to soften the blow. Many mistakes and failures hold valuable life lessons that build character.

From a writer’s perspective, we must always write for joy and not for money. Keep hold of your dream, but find a way to make your writing work for you. Don’t rely on it for an income. Connect and reach out to other authors.

Never expect smoothness – if we expect the unexpected, we can learn to be more resilient and less afraid of challenges and obstacles.

When we stop seeing fear as a monster and start seeing him as our friend, our fears will settle. They may remain, but if we manage them well, we CAN cope and become more confident and live a less fearful live!